Harvey Awards announce 7 for their 2019 Hall of Fame class

The Harvey Awards have announced seven inductees into their Hall of Fame for this year, including Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel and five of Harvey Kurtzman’s core 1950s MAD collaborators. This is the largest of all Hall of Fame induction classes in the 31-year history of the Harvey Awards.

“My very first comic industry award was the 1994 Harvey Award for Best Artist on Hellboy. I never expected that award, but I took it as a sign that I might actually be on to something,” Mignola said. “It is a great honor to be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame—something I certainly never could have imagined. And I’ll take it as proof that I haven’t embarrassed myself too badly over the last 25 years.”

After a career at Marvel and DC, where he worked on Rocket Raccoon, Cosmic Odyssey and Gotham by Gaslight, among other titles, Dark Horse release Mignola’s first Hellboy series in 1994. Since then Mignola has created numerous miniseries and one-shots featuring Hellboy and related characters, including B.P.R.D, Lobster Johnson and Abe Sapien. The “Mignolaverse” continues to grow with new stories to this day, with other creators working with Mignola to expand its scope.

Alison Bechdel is known for the strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which ran from 1983 to 2008. She is also the author of two acclaimed graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? She is currently working on The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

“As someone who existed for so long on the crumbling newsprint margins, it’s surprising and a bit unsettling to receive this recognition from the corridors of comics power. Where did I go wrong?” Bechdel said. “No, just kidding. If you had told me when I was reading Kurtzman parodies in my playpen that I would one day be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame, I would have plotzed. I cannot imagine a greater nor a more furshlugginer honor.”

Paul Levitz will posthumously induct Will Elder, Jack Davis, John Severin, Marie Severin and Ben Oda into the Hall of Fame.

“Inducting these five contributors to the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame is both redundant and obvious,” Levitz said. “As collaborators with Harvey on so much of the great work he did at E.C. Comics, they are already enshrined in every comics scholar and fan’s hall of fame as legends, so they are certainly deserving of the honor of formal induction here. I had the honor of working and being friends with three of the five (Jack, Marie and the inimitable Ben), and loved the work of the other two (Will and John). I can confidently say that they’d be amazed and ever so pleased.”

Additionally, the Comics Industry Pioneer honor will be presented to Maggie Thompson for the work she and her late husband, Don Thompson, did as editors of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Created in 1988 as a successor to the Kirby Awards, the Harvey Awards have been given out almost annually since then. The Hall of Fame was referred to as the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame until around 2001, and following about a decade with no inductions, the Hall of Fame returned in 2014. Last year’s inductees were Roz Chast and Dave Gibbons.

The 2019 Harvey Awards will be presented at 8:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at Hudson Mercantile, in conjunction with the New York Comic Con. You can find a complete list of this year’s nominees here.