What is your favorite comic book?

What's the deal with crappy art in American comics?Everytime I'm looking at comics (in Barnes and Noble, anyway) the Japanese manga stuff is gorgeous - bold color, amazing layout, clear artisic mastery - and the American stuff looks like f*ckin' Garfield. I flipped through The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and while the writing was superb, the art was like the sunday morning comics pages. When I opened the Marvel Manga Universe I was blown away to see my old fav's reimagined Japanese-style. (The manga Dr. Strange really reminded me of Dan Carroll's avatar, for some reason.)I realize that there's as much crap from Japan as in America - now that TokyoPop is in the translation business, that appears to be more true than ever - but none of the American stuff, not even the stuff held to be the best, is anywhere on par with the art quality of the Japanese. What gives?

Come on - you're putting this art:
ahead of this?(Don't you think that looks a little like your avatar? Maybe it's just me. )In terms of writing I'll take Watterson or Moore (but Schultz was lame before I was even born) over Yukito Kishiro anyday, obviously. But the quality of their art - and it may just be that they have very different aims, but I read comics for the pictures, not the words - is light-years behind the full-color richness I see in the manga world.

Maybe we just like comics in a different way.I love C&H. Let's just make that clear. (Who doesn't?) But I don't read Calvin and Hobbes for the same kind of storytelling I want from a really rip-roaring mature adventure kind of comic. So I don't see that a simplified art style is as appropriate for telling a complicated science-fiction story as airbrushed, glinty, full saturated color.I mean, who would you pick to illustrate Dune: The Graphic Novel: Charles Schultz or Joe Madureria? (Although CS would be funny - "You're such a blockhead, Paul Atreides.")(Is it Pick on Scot Kurtz week or something? First Home - Penny Arcade and now you. )