Elliot S! Maggin and Richard E. Hughes to receive the Bill Finger Award

The winners of the 2015 Bill Finger award have been announced and they are Elliot S! Maggin and Richard E. Hughes. The award is presented annually to two writers, one living, one dead, in order to recognize writers who have not previously received proper recognition for their work. The award is named after Bill Finger, the ghost writer for the early Batman stories who invented much of the Caped Crusader’s mythos.

I’m not too familiar with Hughes output, but I see he wrote Adventures into the Unknown, whose covers I use whenever I want to present the dilemna of modern living. Maggin is a quite a well-rounded person who teaches and ran for congress, among other things. Congrats to both.

The awards will be presented during the annual Will Eisner Awards ceremony.  This year’s selection comitte was comprised of Mark Evanier, Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

Elliot S! Maggin

Elliot S! Maggin began his career the hard way, submitting a script completely on “spec” to DC Comics in 1971. Editor Julius Schwartz thought it was the best submission he’d seen in several decades and bought it. Before long, Maggin was writing for most of DC’s star characters with a special emphasis on Superman. He has published several novels, including the upcoming Not My Closet and the soon to be re-released Superman: Miracle Monday. Among his other comic book credits are Green Arrow, Archie’s Super-Teens, Batman, Justice League, Elseworlds, Hulk, Peter Parker, Strange Sports Stories, Wonder Woman, Shazam, Ellison’s Dark Corridors, Star Raiders, Joker, and a bunch of others, including a Marvel Classics version of Homer’s 24-book Iliad “crowbarred” (his term for what he did) into 48 pages. He has also taught at every grade level including adults, run twice for Congress, designed games and software, and raised horses, dogs, bees, and kids.

 

Richard E. Hughes

Richard E. Hughes (1909–1974) was one of the most prolific writers and editors to ever work in comics, so much so that his work was published under dozens of pen names ranging from “Ace Aquila” to “Zev Zimmer.”  Even “Richard E. Hughes” was a pen name for the man born Leo Rosenbaum. “Hughes” began writing for advertising and pulps in the 1930s, and his first known comic book credits were for Pine Comics where he co-created and wrote Doc Strange (no relation to the later Marvel hero) for Thrilling Comics #1 in 1940. His best-known character of that era was probably The Black Terror for Standard Comics. He eventually assumed the editor position for publisher Ben Sangor and helmed Sangor’s American Comics Group, which published both funny comics and the first horror titles, such as Adventures Into the Unknown. Hughes wrote many of the scripts for years and almost all of them the last decade of ACG’s existence. His best-known work came in a 1958 issue of Forbidden Worlds, where he wrote and co-created the Fat Fury, Herbie Popnecker, who later spun off into his own, well-remembered comic book series of the sixties, Herbie.