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Friday, May 06, 2005
The Bill Finger Award for Comic Book Writing
Newsarama has a piece on a new award for lifetime achievment in comics writing named after long-neglected Batman writer Bill Finger. I'm glad Finger is getting some deserved recognition. Certainly, he's been set aside for too long and his contribution to the Batman mythos is invaluable.
However.
Recognition to Finger aside, naming such an award after him does not set a very high bar for the art of comics writing. The craft of it, sure, and the impact one creator can have in shaping a significant character, of course. But when you think of noteworthy comics writing, writing which can not only be great comics but also considered art on its own terms, Finger does not come to mind. For that matter, no names would come up for comic book writers - as opposed to writer/artists - until the seventies, with that decade's wave of young ambitious talents such as Steve Gerber and Denny O'Neill. Ironically, O'Neill is serving as one of the five judges for the first year of the Finger Award.
Even in underground comics, where writing was significantly improved, it was almost entirely people who both wrote and drew. Among the excellent writer/artists of the underground whose writing was particularly strong were Robert Crumb, Justin Green (many consider his Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary the greatest underground comic of all time, one of the first and best autobiographical comics), Gilbert Shelton, and Spain.
This only highlights a point that I know will be controversial to some and painfully obvious to others: the Golden Age of Comics - and much of the Silver Age - was not a time of great comics writing in general, and certainly less noteworthy if you consider people who only wrote comics and not drew them as well. When you set aside all the writer/artists - and here I'd even include the writer/artists who'd write for other artists as well, such as Harvey Kurtzman for EC - the significant writers in American comics of those early periods were not great writers per se. They often indulged in stylistic excesses which made comics ripe for parody (think EC and Stan Lee's Marvel) and sometimes couldn't even plot their way out of a paper bag (Mort Weisinger's kid-friendly Superman comics, charming as they are, were often absurd). For many who wrote comics, the medium was a place to earn a paycheck and nothing more. It'd take a generation raised on comics who would choose to work in the industry - as opposed to fall into it accidentally or out of circumstance - to elevate comics writing into something worth talking about on its own merits.
Up to now, the major comics awards have been named for the most important creator in comics history, Jack Kirby, and, when that award fell apart, two of the most influential writer/artists, Kurtzman and Will Eisner. For many, they are the Holy Trinity of American comics history. They all have careers spanning decades, from the start of comics to the rise of the direct market, and all have made contributions to the medium which are considered some of the most significant comic books of all time. To give Finger the benefit of the doubt, he added a good deal to the Batman mythos and wrote some well-crafted stories. But does that compare to creating Marvel's Silver Age, or helming the original Mad comic, or the EC War Stories, or The Spirit, or even A Contract With God? I'm not trying to belittle what Finger did, just place it in the proper context. The fact is, he's one of many neglected talents of American comics' early years, but that does not mean he deserves a place next to the giants of the form. (And to be honest, I don't think Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster or Bob Kane or some others should be lumped together with the Trinity, either. To do so would not be objective critical thinking but an indulgence in nostalgia.)
Personally, I think if you're going to name an award for comics writing after someone, it should be Alan Moore. He continues to set the standard for mainstream work to this very day with Watchmen in particular but also V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, and Miracleman. For alternative comics, he has written From Hell and A Small Killing, among others. Brought to Light is a generally underlooked achievement in the spirit of the undergrounds. I'm sure Moore would decline having an award named after him (or maybe not, you can never tell with him nowadays), but his is a career that all comics writers should aspire to. I'm not sure the same can be said for Bill Finger.
One last thing: there'll be many jokes about writers "getting the Finger". So now that I've said it, you can refrain from doing the same.
However.
Recognition to Finger aside, naming such an award after him does not set a very high bar for the art of comics writing. The craft of it, sure, and the impact one creator can have in shaping a significant character, of course. But when you think of noteworthy comics writing, writing which can not only be great comics but also considered art on its own terms, Finger does not come to mind. For that matter, no names would come up for comic book writers - as opposed to writer/artists - until the seventies, with that decade's wave of young ambitious talents such as Steve Gerber and Denny O'Neill. Ironically, O'Neill is serving as one of the five judges for the first year of the Finger Award.
Even in underground comics, where writing was significantly improved, it was almost entirely people who both wrote and drew. Among the excellent writer/artists of the underground whose writing was particularly strong were Robert Crumb, Justin Green (many consider his Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary the greatest underground comic of all time, one of the first and best autobiographical comics), Gilbert Shelton, and Spain.
This only highlights a point that I know will be controversial to some and painfully obvious to others: the Golden Age of Comics - and much of the Silver Age - was not a time of great comics writing in general, and certainly less noteworthy if you consider people who only wrote comics and not drew them as well. When you set aside all the writer/artists - and here I'd even include the writer/artists who'd write for other artists as well, such as Harvey Kurtzman for EC - the significant writers in American comics of those early periods were not great writers per se. They often indulged in stylistic excesses which made comics ripe for parody (think EC and Stan Lee's Marvel) and sometimes couldn't even plot their way out of a paper bag (Mort Weisinger's kid-friendly Superman comics, charming as they are, were often absurd). For many who wrote comics, the medium was a place to earn a paycheck and nothing more. It'd take a generation raised on comics who would choose to work in the industry - as opposed to fall into it accidentally or out of circumstance - to elevate comics writing into something worth talking about on its own merits.
Up to now, the major comics awards have been named for the most important creator in comics history, Jack Kirby, and, when that award fell apart, two of the most influential writer/artists, Kurtzman and Will Eisner. For many, they are the Holy Trinity of American comics history. They all have careers spanning decades, from the start of comics to the rise of the direct market, and all have made contributions to the medium which are considered some of the most significant comic books of all time. To give Finger the benefit of the doubt, he added a good deal to the Batman mythos and wrote some well-crafted stories. But does that compare to creating Marvel's Silver Age, or helming the original Mad comic, or the EC War Stories, or The Spirit, or even A Contract With God? I'm not trying to belittle what Finger did, just place it in the proper context. The fact is, he's one of many neglected talents of American comics' early years, but that does not mean he deserves a place next to the giants of the form. (And to be honest, I don't think Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster or Bob Kane or some others should be lumped together with the Trinity, either. To do so would not be objective critical thinking but an indulgence in nostalgia.)
Personally, I think if you're going to name an award for comics writing after someone, it should be Alan Moore. He continues to set the standard for mainstream work to this very day with Watchmen in particular but also V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, and Miracleman. For alternative comics, he has written From Hell and A Small Killing, among others. Brought to Light is a generally underlooked achievement in the spirit of the undergrounds. I'm sure Moore would decline having an award named after him (or maybe not, you can never tell with him nowadays), but his is a career that all comics writers should aspire to. I'm not sure the same can be said for Bill Finger.
One last thing: there'll be many jokes about writers "getting the Finger". So now that I've said it, you can refrain from doing the same.
