Since the founding of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (and their previous incarnation, the Kirby Awards), the following individuals have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Ogden Whitney is best known as the artist of “Herbie, the Fat Fury,” the strange boy addicted to lollipops who appeared in ACG Comics from the late 1950s to mid-1960s. Herbie (scripted by Shane O’Shea aka Richard Hughes) made his first appeared in Forbidden Worlds in 1958 and got his own feature in 1964. In the later 1960s.
Al Williamson was the “young guy” among the EC artists of the early 1950s, producing classic stories for the various science fiction titles, often in collaboration with Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, and Roy Krenkel. After the EC heyday, Williamson moved on to draw a wide variety of stories for Atlas, ACG, and other companies. In the 1960s, he found his niche in adventure comic strips, with a regular gig on Secret Agent X-9 and then a memorable stint as the artist on the Star Wars comics strip.
As “Barry Smith,” Barry Windsor Smith became an immediate fan favorite in the early 1970s as penciler for Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian. After pursuing a fine-arts career, producing limited-edition fantasy-themed prints, he returned to Marvel in the 1980s, drawing and coloring Machine Man and writing and drawing “Weapon X,” his own take on Wolverine. In the early 1990s he served as creative director and lead artist at Valiant Comics. Since that time his work has been published by Malibu, Dark Horse, Image, and Fantagraphics.
Bill Woggon created “Katy Keene, the Pinup Queen” for Archie Comics in 1945. Katy appeared not just in her own book but also in Laugh and PepComics, giant comics like Katy Keene Pinup Parade, and occasional issues of Archie Giant Series Magazine. Notable about Woggon's comics was that he encouraged fans to send in their designs for clothes (as well as cars and even rocketships), for Katy and her accompanying cast of characters. The series ran until 1961. Woggon then went to work on Millie the Lovable Monster for Dell. A revival of Katy Keene comics occurred in the 1980s, with reprints of Woggon's stories, as well as new stories illustrated by other cartoonists.
Marv Wolfman is best known for Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths at DC and as the writer/creator of Blade, the Vampire Hunter and Bullseye (the prime villain in the 2003 movie Daredevil) at Marvel. Marv has also been editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics, senior editor at DC Comics, and founding editor of Disney Adventures magazine.
Although he will be forever associated with the “Lena the Hyena” drawing he did for Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, Basil Wolverton produced memorable science fiction comics during the Golden Age, including the “Spacehawk” and “Space Patrol” series. He also produced hundreds of caricatures and other drawings in his distinctive stippled style and produced work for MAD.
Wallace Wood ‘s art style first captured readers in EC’s science fiction titles and particularly in MAD. He gave the distinctive look to the “Mars Attacks’ trading cards and created, edited, and drew T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in the 1960s. He also produced work for Marvel, including Daredevil, and for DC (All-Star Comics). In his later years, he published one of the most polished fanzines (Witzend) and self-published a wide variety of works, from The Pipsqueak Papers to Cannon and the adult Sally Forth.
Bernie Wrightson is perhaps best known as the co-creator (with Len Wein) of Swamp Thing. He worked for both DC and Marvel early in his career, with Swamp Thing hitting big for DC in 1972. In the mid-1970s Bernie’s work in Warren’s horror magazines brought him further popularity, and in 1975 he formed The Studio with Michael Kaluta, Jeffrey Jones, and Barry Windsor-Smith. During this time he produced the art for an edition of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The early 1980s saw the appearance of his own Captain Sternn for Heavy Metal, the Freakshow and Creepshow graphic novels, and other collaborations with Stephen King.
