Writers Jenny Blake Isabella and Martin Pasko will receive the Bill Finger Award this year, while Elfquest creators Richard and Wendy Pini will receive the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.
Both awards are given out each year during the Eisner Awards ceremony at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The ceremony will take place Friday, July 24 in the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront in San Diego.
The Pinis will receive their award for donating $500,000 to establish the Wendy and Richard Pini Comics and Cartoon Endowment at Columbia University.
“There are three main areas where the endowment will be used: acquisitions, obviously, but also conservation and stewardship. That last can include processing, digitizing, promoting—anything that makes the collection more accessible,” said Karen Green, curator for Comics and Cartoons at Columbia’s Butler Library.
Named for Beany and Cecil creator Bob Clampett, the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award will be presented by its namesake’s daughter, Ruth Clampett.
2026 Bill Finger Award
Isabella and Pasko are the latest recipients of the Bill Finger Award, joining a list that includes William Messner-Loebs, Elliot S! Maggin, Steve Gerber, Archie Goodwin, Bob Haney, Don McGregor, John Stanley, Sam Glanzman, Jo Duffy, Robert Morales and more.
Each year two writers — one living, one deceased — are chosen by a committee headed up by Mark Evanier to receive the award, which recognizes writers whose contributions have gone unsung in the industry. The award honors Bill Finger, who was the first writer of Batman. His contributions to the character went unrecognized until 2015, with Bob Kane being listed as Batman’s sole creator until that time.
“As is always the case, the judges considered many nominations that were submitted to us and we picked two that stood out as the right choices,” Evanier remarked. “Both writers met our criteria of having generated a large and significant body of work that hasn’t received proper recognition and probably not proper compensation.”
Jenny Blake Isabella broke into comics as an editorial assistant at Marvel Comics and went on to write titles like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, The Champions, the Tigra feature in Marvel Chillers and It!, The Living Colossus. For DC Comics, she wrote Hawkman and created Black Lightning with artist Trevor VonEeden. In 2025, she came out as transgender, as shown in the autobiographical story included in DC Pride 2025.
Martin “Marty” Pasko, a writer and editor whose career spanned comics, TV and animation, passed away in 2020. He broke into the comics industry in the early 1970s at Warren Publishing, then went on to write numerous titles for DC, including Superman, Doctor Fate, Swamp Thing, Wonder Woman, DC Comics Presents, Metal Men, Kobra, Adventure Comics and many more. His TV work included episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, for which he won a Daytime Emmy, as well as The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs. he also consulted on the live-action TV shows Smallville and Birds of Prey.
In addition to the above two awards and, of course, the Eisners themselves, the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing Award and the Russ Manning award will also be presented during the ceremony.
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