The Harvey Awards, which honors exemplary comic book work, will be adding members to its Hall of Fame at New York Comic Con in October. The new inductees are Neil Gaiman, whose best-selling series The Sandman was recently adapted for Netflix, the underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, and Roy Thomas, a prolific writer and editor for DC Comics and Marvel Comics.
Marjorie Henderson Buell, who died in 1993 and was the creator of Little Lulu, will be inducted posthumously.
The Harvey Awards, which honors comic book creators, has announced their Hall of Fame inductees – three of the four have comic strip bona fides.
Little Lulu creator “Marge” never worked on the syndicated Little Lulu comic strip or the famed Little Lulu comic books, but she is credited with being the cartoonist on the Kleenex ads that appeared in Sunday newspaper comic supplements across the nation in the 1940s.
From The New York Times announcement of The Harvey Awards Hall of Fame:
Little Lulu debuted in 1935 as a single-panel cartoon in The Saturday Evening Post. The character proved popular and Buell, who was known as Marge and who controlled the rights to Little Lulu, spun her into a syndicated newspaper strip and later, comics, cartoons and all manner of merchandise.
Underground comix cartoonist Gilbert Shelton created Wonder Wart-Hog, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy’s Cat, The Nerds, and much more. But those named comix characters all appeared as comic strips in the underground press of the very late 1960s and the 1970s.
And, if that weren’t enough, Gilbert deserves a spot in every cartooning hall of fame for:
Famed comic book writer Roy Thomas also wrote comic strips. He ghost-wrote the last two decades of The Amazing Spider-Man strip and wrote the first years of the Conan the Barbarian newspaper comic.
Not to discount Neil Gaiman, who didn’t contribute to comic strips. Neil’s Sandman series by itself qualifies him for this honor. His Miracleman work, The Books of Magic, and Marvel 1602, among others, only confirm the entitlement.
The Beat has reactions from the newly christened Hall of Famers.