Barbara Friedlander, Sam Glanzman will receive the 2023 Bill Finger Award

The awards will be presented at Comic-Con International next month during the Eisner Award ceremony.

Comic-Con International has announced that Barbara Friedlander and Sam Glanzman will receive the 2022 Bill Finger Award. The award recognizes creators who made lasting contributions to comics that went largely “unsung,” as Bill Finger’s contributions to the creation of Batman and related characters went unsung for several decades.

“Once again, we’re excited to honor two folks who wrote great comic books that perhaps didn’t receive the attention and recognition that their work deserved,” said Mark Evanier, who oversees the awards program. “Readers who only know from fictional superheroes should be aware of the excellent writing that has sometimes been found in comics about real-world romance and real-world war— two areas represented well by this year’s recipients.”

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Bob Bolling, Don Rico will receive the 2022 Bill Finger Award

The awards will be presented at Comic-Con International next month during the Eisner Award ceremony.

Comic-Con International has announced that Bob Bolling and Don Rico will receive the 2022 Bill Finger Award. The award recognizes creators who made lasting contributions to comics that went largely “unsung,” as Bill Finger’s contributions to Batman went unsung for several decades.

“We’re excited to be back presenting awards in our original format,” Evanier noted.  “And we couldn’t have better recipients than these two men, whose work in comics never received the recognition it deserved. Too often, they worked in utter anonymity, creating work that is fondly remembered even if those who enjoyed it were unaware of its authors’ names.”

Bolling spent the majority of his long career creating comics for Archie Comics, including stories featuring Pat the Brat, Little Archie, Life With Archie, Betty, Betty and Me, Sabrina and more. he also drew Wally the Wizard for Marvel’s Star line. Rico, meanwhile, wrote stories for Marvel/Timely back in the 1940s, working on Captain America, the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and more. In the 1960s, he scripted the Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #52 that introduced Black Widow, who he co-created with Stan Lee and Don Heck.

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CCI announces this year’s Bill Finger Award recipients

Six writers will posthumously receive the award this year.

Comic-Con International has announced that six writers will receive the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing this year, the second year in a row that they’ve given the award to that many people. In most years, the award is given to two recipients and presented during the Eisner Award ceremony at Comic-Con International — which will again be virtual this year.

“Since we are not yet in a position to honor a writer who is still with us in a proper ceremony, we’re going to a long list of comic book writers from the past who we feel did not receive sufficient recognition or reward for their contributions to the field. As with last year, we have selected six posthumous awards and no ‘alive’ award,” Mark Evanier, who chairs the selection committee, said. “Each of these six writers left us with a body of work that the judges deem worthy of this honor.”

The 2021 Bill Finger Award recipients include:

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Winners announced for the 2019 Eisner Awards

Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Jen Wang, ‘Giant Days’ and more take home trophies.

The winners were announced last night for the 2019 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

Tom King and Mitch Gerads, partners on the Mister Miracle series from DC, took home five awards between them. John Allison’s Giant Days and The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang also took home multiple awards.

The Eisner Awards also inducted 10 people into the Hall of Fame last night: the judges chose Jim Aparo, June Tarpé Mills, Dave Stevens and Morrie Turner, while voters chose José Luis García-López, Jenette Kahn, Paul Levitz, Wendy and Richard Pini, and Bill Sienkiewicz to join the class of 2019.

Other awards given out last night included the The Bill Finger Excellence In Comic Book Writing Award, which was presented to Mike Friedrich and the late E. Nelson Bridwell, and the Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award, which went to Lorena Alvarez.

The 2019 recipients of the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award were Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, for his work on Ricanstruction: Reminiscing & Rebuilding Puerto Rico, and comic artist Tula Lotay, AKA Lisa Wood, for creating the UK-based Thought Bubble Festival. And La Revisteria Comics in Argentina won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award.

You can see all the Eisner winners below, in bold.

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Mike Friedrich, E. Nelson Bridwell to receive Bill Finger Award

Annual award will be presented during the Eisner Award celebration at Comic-Con International in July.

Comic-Con International has announced the recipients of this year’s Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Writing, which goes to writers who have not been given due recognition for their work.

This year’s award will go to Mike Friedrich, a pioneer of independent comics as well as a writer for both DC Comics and Marvel, and E. Nelson Bridwell, who worked on MAD Magazine and co-created The Inferior Five, The Secret Six and The Angel and the Ape for DC Comics. Before becoming professional writers, both men were active letter-writers to comics letter columns. You can read more about both men on the CCI website.

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For the first time, two women comic writers will receive this year’s Bill Finger Award

Joye Hummel Murchison Kelly and Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk, two comic book pioneers who kicked off their careers in the 1940s, will receive the award during the Eisners ceremony at Comic-Con International.

Comic-Con International has announced the recipients of this year’s Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Writing, which goes to writers who have not been given due recognition for their work.

Joye Hummel Murchison Kelly and Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk, two comic book pioneers active in the 1940s, will be the first women to receive the award.

“We’re really excited about this one,” committee chair Mark Evanier said in a statement. “The comic book industry employed too few women in its early decades. Back when this year’s honorees were active, their gender was horribly unrepresented among the creative talents that made the comics—and what few there were went totally unrecognized. The work of these two extraordinary ladies deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated.”

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Comics Lowdown: IDW adapts ‘The Force Awakens,’ Ringos slated for BCC

Plus: Jack Kirby and William Messner-Loebs to receive the Bill Finger Award, why millennials like webcomics and more.

IDW announced its all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic series a few months ago, but they sprang a surprise this week: In August, they will publish an 80-page graphic novel adaptation of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The graphic novel, which is also intended for younger readers, is part of Disney’s Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi publishing program, which is designed to gin up excitement for the eighth movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which will be out in December. The writer of the adaptation is Alessandro Ferrari, and the art is provided by “a group of Disney artists intended to bridge the gap between Star Wars and traditional Disney animation, making it more attractive for younger audiences.” You’d think people with that sort of ability would merit an actual name credit, but I guess not. This same anonymous group has done other Star Wars graphic novel adaptations that were published by Disney Lucasfilm Press, and in fact, Bleeding Cool notes that this graphic novel was announced in an article about them almost a year ago. That means the big news is really the publisher—it looks like IDW, will launch Star Wars Adventures in September, is becoming the chief publisher of Star Wars comics for young readers.

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