The 34th Harvey Awards are less than two weeks away and there is even more reason to be excited as the Hall of Fame 2022 welcomes four big names onto the roster: Neil Gaiman, Roy Thomas, Gilbert Shelton, and the late Little Lulu creator Marge Buell. All four will be formally inducted as part of the Harvey Awards 2022 ceremony on Friday October 7, 2022 at New York Comic Con.

From the PR:

“The Harvey Awards today revealed this year’s inductees into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame in advance of the annual awards ceremony to be held during New York Comic Con. The 2022 Harvey Awards find four recipients being honored: award-winning fantasy and science fiction writer Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, American Gods), comic book writer and former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas (X-Men, The Avengers), cartoonist and member of the underground comix movement Gilbert Shelton (The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers), and cartoonist Marge Buell (Little Lulu).”

Neil Gaiman’s response to the honour:

“The first time I was given a Harvey Award, it was 1991, 31 years ago, I had a whole career or two ahead of me and Harvey Kurtzman was still alive. It was the award that bore his name and was thus the most important award I had ever received. Now, with over three decades of comics career behind me, it’s just as thrilling to hear that I get to join a Hall of Fame named for Harvey. He was one of the greats, and so many of the people who have been inducted already have been people I looked up to over the years. So this is an unalloyed delight for me.”

Roy Thomas:

“I want to extend my thanks to the folks at the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame for announcing that I will be inducted into said Hall for the year 2022 . . . my 57th year in the field. It comes as an honor to receive an award named for my colleague and acquaintance Harvey Kurtzman, since I have stood in awe of him ever since I learned who it was that was primarily responsible for all that MAD-ness in the first 23 issues (and then some) of one of the best comicbooks ever to come down the pike.”

Gilbert Shelton:

“I am very pleased to be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame. Kurtzman was a great influence on my life, being a role model as writer, artist, and publisher. MAD comics were a revolutionary development in American humor. I am proud to be associated with him.”

Marjorie “Marge” Henderson Buell passed away in 1993, age 88. Her son Frederic Buell responded to her receiving this posthumous honor:

 “We—Marge’s surviving clan—are absolutely delighted at her induction into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame. It is a great honor. She created Little Lulu—out of a love of playfully subversive, subtly wry comedy and satire. Thanks to her characteristic modesty, and to the fact that she worked at a time when graphic art had not yet become as important to American and global culture as it now is, Marge would have been deeply surprised at being remembered like this.”

A special award, the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame has previously inducted Darwyn Cooke, Osamu Tezuka, Dwayne McDuffie, Mike Mignola, and Alison Bechdel, among many others. Last year five people received this career recognition award – Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Michael Kaluta, Rumiko Takahashi, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Bernie Wrightson.

The steering committee for the Harvey Awards is co-chaired by Nellie Kurtzman, John Lind, and Chip Mosher. The Awards will be coordinated by Chris D’Lando and Camilla Di Persia of ReedPop and Eden Miller.

The Harvey Awards are a major annual industry award – with only professional comics industry members eligible to vote. The Awards are named after influential MAD cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman and have began in 1988. 2022 marks the 34th year of the awards.