Each July at the glorious Comic-Con International in San Diego, we present the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. And by that, I mean we give out two of them — one to a deceased writer of the past and one to someone who's still around and who can, we hope, show up to accept in person.
And each year, I solicit suggestions here of folks you think are deserving. Now, I should point out that we are not desperate for nominations. Last year alone, we received so many good ones that we could probably give out this trophy for nearly a decade, just drawing from that list. If you proposed someone in the past, you need not resubmit that name. Everyone who has been proposed in the past and has not won is reconsidered each year. My notes show me we've had around 200 people submitted for consideration since we started this. That breaks down to — well, let me do the math here…
Okay, got it. It's roughly 199 men and 1 woman. We recognize that for a long time, the industry was not exactly wide open for women writers. Few applied, fewer got in and there's not much we can do about that now. However, there have been very fine, important female writers of comics and if you want to think of names that our judges should consider, you might want to think in that direction. And then if you do have a name — male or female — that might not have been mentioned in the past, send it to me. Before you do though, read this…
- This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer. Every year, a couple of folks nominate their favorite artist. Sometimes, they don't get that "writer" part and sometimes, they argue that their nominee qualifies because their favorite artist was in the field so long, he must have written an issue of something at some time so we can give him this trophy. No, no and no. A body of work as a comic book writer. Why is that so difficult to understand?
- Bill Finger in his lifetime received almost no credit for his work and nowhere near a respectable share of the revenue it generated. This award is for a writer who has received insufficient reward for his or her splendid body of work. It can be insufficient in terms of recognition or insufficient in terms of legal tender or it can, of course, be both. But this is not just an award for writing good comic books.
- And it's for writing comic books, not comic strips. We stretch that definition far enough to include MAD but that's about as far as we'll stretch it.
- To date, this award has gone to Arnold Drake, Alvin Schwartz, George Gladir, Larry Lieber, Frank Jacobs, Gary Friedrich, Del Connell, Steve Skeates, Don Rosa, Jerry Siegel, Harvey Kurtzman, Gardner Fox, Archie Goodwin, John Broome, Otto Binder, Bob Haney, Frank Doyle, Steve Gerber, Robert Kanigher, Bill Mantlo and Jack Mendelsohn. Those folks are therefore ineligible. You cannot win twice.
Got a name to be worthy of consideration? My address is on this page. Any reasonable suggestion will be placed before our Blue Ribbon Judging Committee for contemplation. The selections will be announced some time in May and the presentations will be done at the Eisner Awards ceremony, which are usually Friday evening at Comic-Con.