Before he passed, comic creator Jerry Robinson inaugurated the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing — an honor 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. At the time Jerry proposed this award, that was all too true of Bill Finger.
These days, Finger is acknowledged for his contributions to his most important work…but since others are not, the award lives on. This is the annual announcement that as its Administrator, I am now open to receive nominations and suggestions for the 2017 presentation. We give out two of them. 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. Here's what else you need to know…
- 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 has done so many comics, he must have written one or two of them so we can give him this trophy. Wrong. It's for a body of work as a comic book writer. Got that? Also, "a body of work" is not one or two comics you liked written by someone relatively new to the field.
- 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 or pulps or anything else. 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, Don McGregor, Richard E. Hughes and Elliott S! Maggin. Those folks, having already won, cannot win again.
- If you have already nominated someone in years past, you need not nominate them again. They will be considered for this year's awards.
- 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? If so, here's the new address for nominations. Nominations will be accepted until April 24 when all reasonable suggestions 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.