Years ago, a wonderful man named Jerry Robinson inaugurated the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing — an honor to be presented each year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. The award recognizes a writer of comics who produced a splendid body of work but who did not receive proper recognition and/or financial reward. What Jerry had in mind was to publicize the name and fate of his friend Bill Finger, who wrote the key early Batman stories and who at least co-created the character and his wonderful, rich mythology.
In the last year, that injustice has been somewhat rectified. Bill Finger is now acknowledged for his contributions to his most important work…but since others are not, we're going to keep on giving out the award. This is the annual announcement that as its Administrator, I am now open to receive nominations and suggestions as to who might be worthy of it.
As you may know, each year we give out two of them. Okay, so one year we splurged and gave out three…but we'll probably give out two in 2016. One is a posthumous award. The other is for someone who is happily alive and who can (we hope) be there to receive it in person.
If in the past you nominated someone who is alive, you do not have to submit that name again. I have all the past nominations of alive people and they will all be considered this year. No need to send them in again but new names are quite welcome.
If in the past you nominated a deceased person, they will also be considered but there is a way you can perhaps boost their chances. Send me their name again but do it in accord with our new Bullet Point #5, which you can read below.
- 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? Also, "a body of work" is not one or two comics you liked written by someone relatively new to the field.
- 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, Jack Mendelsohn, John Stanley and Don McGregor. Those folks are therefore ineligible. One cannot win twice.
- New point, just added: If you nominate someone for the posthumous award, it would help if you also suggested an appropriate person to accept on that person's behalf. Ideally, it would be a relative, preferably a spouse, child or grandchild. It could also be a person who worked with the nominee or — last resort — a friend or historian who can speak about them and their work. And if it's not a relative, we would also welcome suggestions as to an appropriate place for the plaque to reside — say, a museum or with someone who was close to the honoree.
Would you like to nominate someone? Or re-nominate a deceased writer you already nominated with a suggestion of who could accept? If so, my address is on this page. Nominations will be accepted until April 1 and then any reasonable suggestion will be placed before our Blue Ribbon Judging Committee. Their selections will be announced some time in May and the presentations will be made at the Eisner Awards ceremony, which is Friday evening at Comic-Con. This may well be the sanest election in this country in all of 2016.