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.
The bizarre triangle of Ignatz Mouse, Krazy Kat, and Offisa Pup sprang from the fertile mind of cartoonist George Herriman, whose imaginative use of the comics page and unique setting have captivated readers for nearly a century. Because of Herriman, a brick isn’t just a brick. Inducted 2000
Artist and educator Burne Hogarth is best known for his beautiful Tarzan Sunday newspaper pages from 1937 to 1950. In 1950 he abandoned his own comics production to devote all his time to teaching at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later the School of Visual Arts), which he had founded with Silas Rhodes back in 1947. Hogarth taught at this school until 1970 and also authored a series of books on drawing and anatomy.
Jerry Iger was one of the first people involved in the comic book business, founding his own Phoenix Features Syndicate. His strips published in Famous Funnies are among the first ever produced especially for comic books. With Will Eisner, he formed the S. M. Iger Studios in 1937, which eventually became known as the Eisner-Iger Shop. Among their productions were Jumbo, Jungle, Planet, and Wings for Fiction House. When Eisner left in 1939, the studio continued as the Iger Shop, which produced titles for such companies as Fox, Quality, and Harvey up until 1955.
Carmine Infantino‘s art established a distinctive look to DC’s science fiction comics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His work on the relaunched Silver Age Flash is prized by collectors. In the mid-1960s he became DC’s art director and proceeded to use such artists as Joe Kubert, Joe Orlando, and Dick Giordano as editors. He moved on to become DC’s editorial director, publisher, and president; he left DC in 1975.
Graham Ingels is best known for his stories and covers for EC Comics’ horror line: The Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt, and The Vault of Horror. Ingels was one of the first artists to come to work for EC after Bill Gaines took over the company in 1948. As "Ghastly” Graham Ingels, he became the company’s premiere horror artist.
Jack Jackson, aka “Jaxon,” created, wrote, drew, and self-published what comics historians consider one of the first underground comix, God Nose. He was art director at Family Dog and a co-founder of Rip-Off Press. He contributed to such underground anthology titles as Skull, Slow Death, and Tales of the Leather Nun. Jaxon went on to pioneer historical graphic novels with the innovative Comanche Moon series for Last Gasp. He continued chronicling his home state’s history via El Alamo, Los Tejanos, and Lost Cause.
Al Jaffee is best known as the creator of MAD magazine’s fold-ins, which he has been doing since 1964, and for “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” a feature that has been collected into over a dozen books. Al is MAD’s longest-running contributor, having been there since 1955. Earlier in his career, Al worked for Stan Lee at Timely, where he was in charge of all humor and teen titles as associate editor. He also worked with Harvey Kurtzman on the short-lived Trump and Humbug humor magazines.
Tove Jansson began her work as a political cartoonist and illustrator in the Garm magazine in the 1930s; through these strips, Moomin was born. Her first book was published in 1945, featuring her loveable hippopotamus-like characters, The Moomins and the Great Flood. She went on to write several more Moomin books as well as her equally popular children’s books. She produced her magnum opus that consisted of 21 long Moomin stories that were broken up as four panel strips from 1954 to1959. Jansson’s work has been translated into 33 languages and they are the most widely translated works of Finnish literature. Not only does she have an amusement park based on her Moomin world but the Finnish put her likeness on a coin.
Jenette Kahn rebranded National Periodical Publications as DC Comics, reviving the floundering company as a proving ground for both experimental titles and reboots of iconic characters. She started as publisher at DC in 1976, at only 28 years old, after having founded the wildly successful kids magazine Dynamite for Scholastic. Kahn became president of DC in 1981 and editor-in-chief in 1989. She pushed the boundaries of mainstream comics, publishing work such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, and launched the edgier Vertigo line in 1993. She grew the company from 35 employees to 200 (half of them women) and instituted more creator-friendly policies. In 2000 the Library of Congress honored Kahn as a Living Legend for her contributions to America’s cultural heritage. In 2002 she left DC to create her own film production company, Double Nickel, which produced Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino in 2008.
Carol Kalish served as direct sales manager and vice president of new product development at Marvel Comics from 1981 to 1991. She is credited with pioneering the comics direct market when it was in its adolescence, in part through a program in which Marvel helped pay for comic book stores to acquire cash registers. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Kalish spearheaded the expansion of Marvel's distribution into previously unexplored retail outlets, including major bookstores such as B. Daltons and Waldenbooks. In 2010 she was posthumously awarded the first ComicsPRO Industry Appreciation Award.
Artist and illustrator Michael Kaluta is best known for his work on The Shadow and Elaine Lee’s Starstruck and for his cover art. Influenced by art nouveau and the 1930s pulps, he brought a unique look to comics in the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years he has been in demand as a cover artist, including an award-nominated run on DC/Vertigo’s Madame Xanadu.
Bob Kane entered the comic book industry in 1936 as a freelancer for Jerry Iger’s Wow! What a Magazine! At the Eisner-Iger studio, he drew funny animal strips and humor features. His first adventure strip was “Rusty and His Pals” for DC’s Adventure Comics. In 1939 he collaborated with writer Bill Finger to create a new strip for Detective Comics: “The Bat-Man.” The rest is history!
As a penciller, Gil Kane lent his distinctive style to numerous DC and Marvel titles beginning in the 1950s, including drawing more than 900 covers for Marvel starting in the late 1960s. His work at DC on such titles as Green Lantern and The Atom is highly revered by fans, as is his work at Marvel on Amazing Spider-Man, and many other titles. In the 1970s, he was Marvel’s main cover artist.
In the mid-1940s Robert Kanigher wrote the Justice Society of America, Hawkman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman (which he also edited). In 1952 he took over writing and editing the Big Five DC war titles and created Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, and The Unknown Soldier (all with Joe Kubert) and The Haunted Tank (with Russ Heath). In the late 1950s and early 1960s he was involved in creating such characters as Viking Prince, the Metal Men, and Poison Ivy. He also scripted the first appearance of the Flash in Showcase #4, the comic often credited as launching the Silver Age of Comics.
Walt Kelly created the denizens of the Okeefenokee swamp, including Pogo Possum, Albert the Alligator, Miz Mamselle Hepzibah, and Porkypine. His Pogo was one of the great sophisticated comics strips, imbued with great humor, sublime satire, and transcendental cartooning.
