Here's a press release that was just issued…
Jerry Siegel and Arnold Drake have been chosen as the first recipients of the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. They were chosen by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by Jerry Robinson. The committee decided to give two awards, to honor both a deceased and a living writer who exemplify the award's criteria.
Jerry Siegel was, of course, the co-creator (with Joe Shuster) of Superman and Superboy and wrote the Superman comic books and comic strip from the character's first appearance in 1938 up through the late 1940s. He also co-created The Spectre (with Bernard Baily) for DC. After leaving DC (in a well-publicized dispute) in 1948, he continued to write comic books for a variety of companies and served as the comics art director at Ziff-Davis in the 1950s. He returned to DC in 1958, where he wrote uncredited Superman and other scripts through 1964. He died in 1996.
"There is a poetic sense of rightness that Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, and Bill Finger, the unsung hero and writer of Batman, be symbolically united after three quarters of a century after their iconic characters' debuts," says Robinson. "Although both men led tragic lives, by launching the superhero genre and the Golden Age of comics, they left legacies that have enriched our culture."
Arnold Drake's comics writing career spanned the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His credits include Doom Patrol (creator), Deadman (creator), Batman, Superman, Plastic Man, X-Men, Captain Marvel, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Mighty Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle and Rocky, Stanley and His Monster (creator), Little Lulu, Space Ranger, House of Mystery, and Dark Shadows. His It Rhymes with Lust, with art by Matt Baker and Ray Osrin, published by St. John Publishing in 1950, was one of the very first graphic novels.
"Like Finger and Siegel, Drake is a consummate professional writer," says Robinson. "As the author of hundreds of stories from the Silver Age to the present, his credits demonstrate an amazing versatility, ranging from the superhero and adventure such as Doom Patrol to the wry humor of Little Lulu."
The other members of the Finger Awards jury were comics writer and historian Mark Evanier, cartoonist/screenwriter/playwright Jules Feiffer, comics writer/editor Denny O'Neil, and comics writer/editor/historian Roy Thomas.
The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con International: San Diego. Joanne Siegel will be present to accept the award for her late husband. Arnold Drake will be on hand to receive his award.
The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The 2005 awards are being underwritten by DC Comics; sponsorship will be open to other companies in future years.
So that's who we picked. Like it says, Arnold Drake will be at the convention to accept his award, and we're going to take the opportunity to get him on a few panels. Matter of fact, we should have a terrific crop of veteran writers and artists for the "historical" programming items this year. I'm presently slated to moderate fourteen (!) panels, most of them about comic book history, and they're all goodies. I'll have a full list of them up in a week or two.