I tend to feel that way too, but can be more forgiving if I like the art. (late 80s X-Men anyone)

I do feel though, that if we all stuck to the above we would have VERY small collections.

The idea of the superstar artist really got traction in the aftermath of Image and as a reaction to the content in the early Image books which featured superstar artists doing essentially a string of pin ups and calling it a story. When that bubble burst, it created a tide of people latching on to the idea of I need story and books need writers. It coincided with a flus of great writer driven material on the market at the time form the likes of Gaiman, Moore, Busiek, Waid et. al. and became the kind of marriage trends are made of.

It's origins go back into the 80s though, with the influx of talent called the British Invasion spearheaded by Karen Berger and started with Moore coming to DC to do Swamp Thing. These writers were getting a lot of buzz, but the attention, hype, and sales were going to superstar artists, Byrne and Perez and their generation on the heels of the Neal Adams Steranko revolution, followed by the McFarlane, Lee, etc. generation on the Marvel books first and then on the Image launch books. Everything was about the artists and such until people realized they weren't getting quality story entertainment for their $$ and the counter-reaction ensued. People noticed these strong writer driven books chugging along giving quality stories month after month despite the quality of the art (sometimes paired with great artists, sometimes merely with competent artists) and the new wave of the superstar writer was heralded. And then this chugged along for a while and still has a strong presence in the industry, but the pendulum has swung back towards the artists a bit too over the last decade or so. Mostly because the net of superstar writer was cast too wide and a lot of writers included were not consistent or not as good as the hype because everyone was being labelled the next superstar writer instead of letting people create a body of work that announced that itself, just as every guy with a hot issue or 2 or pin up got labelled the next hot artist previously and many failed to live up to the billing.

For me, comics are words and pictures working together to tell a story, so the story is primary. I want a good story told well. A good writer may have a great story but it is in the hands of the artist to tell it well. Artists can tell a story well, but if its not a good story to begin with, it's still not a good story told well. There's an alchemy there, and if it works, the end product is greater than the sum of its parts. If it doesn't work, you can still get decent comics, but ones which, to borrow a phrase, are replete with yeah buts-if was a great story, yeah but it could have been great with better art, or gorgeous art and storytelling, yeah but I wish the story had more to offer....

If you give me a good story with bad art I find myself wishing it had been told in prose to avoid the art, if you give me great art with poor story I find myself wishing I just had a portfolio of the artist's work and not the comic itself. I want a good story told well. The pendulum can swing a little to favor one side or the other (art or writing) at times, but in the end they have to work together and both measure up to effectively tell the story or it's not worth the time it takes to read it or the paper its printed on.

On the artistic side, the simplest art can tell a story well as well as the most complicated decorative art, the style is not important, the storytelling is, the style is a matter of taste, the storytelling is matter of technique. On the writing side, writers need to remember the story is being told visually and pace and design the story accordingly, no having the characters do twelve things in one panel and expect the artist to be able to convey that with one image and when they cannot, the telling of the story suffers (even if the story itself may be good, the writer has to convey it and construct it so that it can be effectively told visually). Again it's technique and craft over ideas and plots that define good writing for me. A writer still has to find a way to tell the best story idea effectively in a visual medium, if he or she cannot, it's not a good story in the end.

-M

My understanding has always been as follows:

1930-1950s: Writer has a little more clout in driving the book. Frames are small, and the writing is dense.

1960s: The Marvel method (and Stan Lee's hyping of the bullpen) puts the spotlight on the artist

1980s: Alan Moore starts attracting readers to the idea of superstar writers. Suddenly, certain writers can sell anything, regardless of the artist. John Byrne becomes a sensation only after convincing folks that, in addition to being a strong artist, he had a hand in the concepts driving the Claremont X-Men run and then goes on to draw AND write Fantastic Four. Simonson draws attention as an artist AND writer on Thor.

1990s: Suddenly, it's all back to the artists. McFarlane, Liefeld, Lee, Portacio, Keith, Bagely, etc. Numerous writers and artists go on record lamenting that any hot artist can get the writing chores on a book without a prior track record.

2000s: The pendulum swings back to writers being king, perhaps in part due to Kevin Smith(?). Morrison, Ellis, Bendis, Millar, etc.

I'd say the change is more a later '90s phenomenon, perhaps in reaction to the artist-driven days of early Image.  I'd say Grant Morrison on JLA was probably the most significant moment as it gave a well-regarded cult writer a massive audience on a book that wasn't particularly artist driven.  (For all the love for Busiek and Waid on Marvels and Kingdom Come, Alex Ross was a major part of its success.)  Neil Gaiman was kind of an outlier previous to this point, but with Morrison's JLA, the more commercial end was the medium was paying more attention to who was writing the book than drawing it.

I would definitely agree with that. I think Quesada's Marvel revolution around 2000 pretty much cemented the "writer first" mentality in many fans. He was definitely approaching the kind of writers who were doing Vertigo and creator-owned work in the '90s to write more commercial superhero books, and a lot of them skyrocketed in popularity. For a few years, I'd say it worked quite well as a marketing tool, but eventually, you'd see revolving event comics come creeping back.  (Also, many of those writers who profited from that boost in popularity have gone back to primarily working on creator-owned material with the difference being that they can now make a living off just that work.  Brubaker, Kirkman, Fraction, Rucka, Millar, etc, with some creators like Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis occasionally dipping their feet back in Marvel's pool for limited runs.)

Writers