Monthly Archives: January 2010

Each year at the Comic-Con International, we give out something called the Bill Finger Award. Actually, we give out two Bill Finger Awards each year — one to a great writer of comic books who is deceased and one to a great writer of comic books who (happily) is still around to come in, pick up his award in person and be honored.

Bill Finger (1914-1974) was, of course, one of the great writers in the early days of comics. He was the co-creator of Green Lantern and that alone is pretty impressive…but he also had another big credit. Mr. Finger was, you see, the main writer of Batman in the forties and for a decade or two after. He was the guy who set the tone, the style, the feel of the stories. He was also the creator of many key Bat-elements and supporting characters and, some would say, the unjustly-uncredited co-creator of the Caped Crusader, himself.

As a matter of contractual fact, Bob Kane is credited as the sole creator of Batman and all the characters in the Bat-Universe…even the Joker, who Kane himself said in his autobiography he did not create. Kane said it was Finger's idea. Everyone else seems to think Batman's main nemesis was the creation of Jerry Robinson, who was Kane's main art assistant at the time. But the point is, Kane said he didn't create The Joker. Still, if you buy a Joker toy, it will say "created by Bob Kane" on it.

Since Finger's name does not appear prominently in connection with the character of Batman, it seemed like the least some of us could do was to slap it on an award. The Bill Finger Award was conceived and established by Jerry Robinson — who, by the way, drew the above sketch of Mr. Finger. Oddly enough though, unbeknownst to Jerry, the award had been proposed a few years earlier by longtime comic book writer Arnold Drake, another friend of Mr. Finger's. Arnold had the idea but couldn't get anyone to act upon it. Then Jerry thought of it on his own and he got it established. I am presently the administrator of the accolade and before I get to the main point of this discussion, I want you to understand what we — and by "we," I mean those of us who have helped select the recipients each year — intend by it.

It's a lifetime achievement award for a writer of comic books who has not really received proper recognition and reward for his or her contributions. Writers often are overlooked and this is an award, to some extent, for being overlooked, either in terms of financial advantage or sheer fame or both. Of course, the person has to have done work that should not have been overlooked in at least one of these ways…and as I said, we give two each year — one to someone who's alive and one to someone who isn't.

The first year, 2005, we gave the posthumous one to Jerry Siegel and the "alive" one to Arnold Drake…who, sadly, would now qualify for the posthumous one. The second year, we gave the posthumous award to Harvey Kurtzman and the "alive" one to Alvin Schwartz, who I'm glad to say still qualifies. So do the rest of our living recipients.

In 2007, we gave the posthumous to Gardner Fox and the "still with us" award to George Gladir. In '08, it was Archie Goodwin (deceased) and Larry Lieber (not deceased). Last year, the posthumous trophy went to John Broome and the there-to-accept plaque went to Frank Jacobs. And this coming year, we're presenting the awards to…

Well, that's where you come in.

This is an open call for nominations, especially for the "still breathing" honor. Because this is a lifetime achievement award, the judging committee doesn't want to start giving it to folks who got into comics in the seventies and eighties just yet; not until we're sure we've exhausted every worthy soul from comics' earlier days. The deceased award is easy because there are plenty of good dead writers…and there's no rush to give it to any one of them in particular. None of them are going to get any deader and there will be more where those came from. What we're looking for is whether we've overlooked some overlooked living writer from Comics' Golden or Silver Ages.

The awards will be presented at the Comic-Con International in San Diego this coming July and if there's any way we can get him or her there, we'll bring in the winner who's still with us and also some family member or other appropriate accepter for the departed honoree. If you can think of someone we might have forgotten, please send me an e-mail within the next month or so.