No. the problem is the Image Comics we got in the 90s with almost no story and just spectacular art.

JT,

No because all artist aren't good writers, and when an artist is a good writer he is both artist and writer, not just an artist who writes.

The difference resides in knowing the craft and having a story to tell.

As you say he is both. There are two talents at work. Two crafts. He has a story to tell, he knows how to tell it, and he knows how to do it in pictures.

As a writer he knows how to plot and how to write dialogues & captions

As an artist he knows visual story-telling and how to draw great art.

If someone like Dave Cockrum didn't do a sequel to his Nightcrawler mini, it is because he couldn't find in himself a second story. He said so himself. And yet what an artist. He could be a writer only on a few, very few occasions. That wasn't his speciality.

Once again stories need to be writen by people who knows how to do it and have a story to tell.

Lot of artists don't have this talent and still desserve better than doing pin-ups, covers or mediocre stories because that's only one they have in them, for all their carreer.

I'll even go as far as saying Rob Liefeld artist and Todd Mc Farlane artist, both deserve better than Rob and Tod writers.

To go back to the opening post, the best collaborator of an artist isn't necessary the "creator" (artist) one-self, because he isn't necessarilly a good writer and hasn't necessarilly a good story to tell.

Sure, any professional artist can do crap comic all by himself. Lame story lacking originality, action scenes, almost no dialogue or just bad one, all that wraped in spectacular art if he is good enough to do some.

I'm not sure i'ld like to read his work. Not even if he pays me.

Comics are a visual medium, so obviously the artist is important. But how important to the storytelling depends on the artist. Some work fine from a plot outline and others would be lost without a fullscript. I'm a trained artist but I dont think I could tell a story with my art like a Kirby or an Adams. Some artists should never be allowed near word processing equipment because they have no ear for dialog.

Would there be a Superman without Jerry Siegal? I think he contributed a lot to the mythos of Superman over  years, possibly more than Joe Shuster did.

In my youth my buying habits were often driven by writers. Guys like Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber. Sometimes they had guys like Neal Adams, John Buscema and Gene Colan drawing other time it was lesser known/respected guys like Don Heck or Bob Brown. But the story and character were still there.