This year’s Harvey Awards, named for the late cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, are set to be held on Friday, October 13th, as part of next week’s New York Comic Con festivities. Among those honored at the ceremony will be the newest class of Harvey Awards Hall of Fame inductees. Today the awards committee announced who those inductees will be, with six legendary comics creators included. This year’s Harvey Awards Hall of Fame inductees are Chris Claremont, Walter Simonson, Louise Simonson, Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Bill Griffith.
In a statement announcing this year’s class, Harvey Awards Committee co-chair John Lind described the committee’s criteria for selecting the six creators this year, particularly their influence in media outside of comics:
“We have an outstanding class of inductees from 2023, with a focus on creators whose influence on the books they created transcended the medium and serve as key examples of comic books’ influence on larger pop culture.”
With work on titles and characters from X-Men to Thor to Superman to the Teen Titans to MAD Magazine, the wider pop culture influence these six creators have had is hardly up for debate. In the statement from the Harvey Awards, Claremont, Wolfman, and Griffith all expressed their gratitude at being recognized by the committee:
Chris Claremont said, “I started writing comics for the fun of it. Stayed in comics for the love of it. Still can’t wait to see what an artist will do with my words. I am honored to be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame, especially as the reason I went to work for Stan Lee at Marvel as an intern many years ago is because Al Jaffee wouldn’t put me up for an internship at MAD Magazine as he felt it was no place for an innocent like me—MAD, the magazine the spectacular Harvey Kurtzman founded.”
“I was mindblown when I was told I was being inducted into the 2023 Harvey Awards Hall of Fame,” said Marv Wolfman. “Having been a huge fan of Harvey, to get an award in his name is a true honor.”
Bill Griffith said, “It’s a great honor to receive an award named for the man who unknowingly set me on the path to cartooning in the mid-1950s when MAD Magazine was my life raft out of suburban Long Island. Not only that, but it looks like him! I had the great pleasure of knowing Harvey, if only slightly. So this feels personal. This year marks the ‘trifecta’ for me, having earlier been inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame and receiving this year’s coveted Reuben Award. Yow! I am having fun yet!”
Past Harvey Awards Hall of Fame inductees include Darwyn Cooke, Dave Gibbons, Alison Bechdel, Marie Severin, Bernie Wrightson, Rumiko Takahashi, Neil Gaiman, and Roy Thomas, among many others. This year’s awards committee is chaired by Lind, Nellie Kurtzman, and Chip Mosher; the awards are coordinated by ReedPop’s Chris L’Lando & Camilla Di Persia, and Eden Miller.
The full Harvey Awards ceremony will be held next week. Congratulations to the six Hall of Fame inductees.
Miss any of our earlier NYCC ’23 coverage? Find it all here!
