1. Stan Lee
Marvel ComicsWe know what you're thinking - Smilin' Stan Lee? Stan The Man? That charming old dude who turns up in all of the Marvel movies, a small tribute to the lives he has improved through his many comic book creations, from Spider-Man to the Avengers? That's a writer you're sick of? WhatCulture, go home. You are drunk. Well first of all, we've only had like two beers, and second of all, we'd've been saying this even if there wasn't any booze involved. Stan Lee may have played a considerable part in bringing superhero comics to their current status, but that doesn't make him a good writer. He definitely isn't. It was Lee's name on all of those early Iron Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four stories, but how much writing he actually did...well, we don't know. Actually we do, and it wasn't all that much - the bulk of the storytelling was handled by the artists, working off of a rough outline by Lee, who then went in and added all the dialogue and narration boxes. Which are overwhelmingly the worst part of any sixties Marvel comics, full of terrible attempts at being "hip", jokes that don't land and speech patterns that we can't believe made sense even back then. Still, didn't stop him from taking all the credit and money, did it? Stan Lee's real strength has always been as an ideas man, and really he was much more comfortable in the role of Marvel's editor-in-chief, where he made business decisions rather than creative ones. It's that same acumen that has made him into the quasi-celebrity he is today, as he shamelessly crops up in all the most visible places saying all the right things so you buy him as the kindly old man who made your childhood magical. Which is good, because his actual creative ideas over the past twenty years have been nothing to write home about. Yeah, Stan Lee is still writing comics and by no means should you seek them out. One of them's called Striperella, for glob's sake. And another is a manga called Heroman. In the early noughties he even defected to DC for a series called Just Imagine... where he put his own spin on the distinguished competition's flagship characters. All of which were terrible. For the love of your legacy, your fans, and the poor misguided fools who keep buying anything with your name on it...please, Stan, stop. Excelsior!