Skip to commentsPublished: October 14, 20261 minute1 comment
A baker’s dozen of cartoonists were inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame last Friday. As far as I know the four living inductees – David Mazzuchelli, Jenette Kahn, Klaus Janson,andFrank Miller – have not worked on newspaper comic strips. But 7 of the 9 posthumous honorees do have comic strip bona fides (Denny O’Neil and Tim Sale are the 2 comic book but not comic strip creators).
Before Jim Aparo became an artist for CharltonandDCcomic books he had a short run as the artist for the Stern Wheeler daily comic strip that ran in The Hartford Times.
Another veteran of Charlton and DC comic books. When Jorge Longarongave up the Friday Foster comic strip in December 1973 an unknown artist took on the comic until Gray Morrow drawing the strip. Morrow soon left and again the last artists (the strip ended in February 1974) didn’t sign the strip. It is said that Giordano was one of those last ghosts. If so it looks to me as if the week of January 21, 1974 could be the work of Giordano.
Carmine Infantino had worked for most of the major comic book companies and had worked every job in the business from art assistant to artist to art director to publisher and back again. In 1961 he drew a Sunday Phantom page. Five years later he drew a half dozen Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder Sunday pages and then a quarter of a century later he again drew Batman for the daily newspapers.
After getting the hang of the daily newspaper comic strip with Scorchy SmithFrank Robbins created Johnny Hazard which ran for 3 decades.
Jerry Robinson started in comic books but gave that up to run an international syndicate. He did make time to create some newspaper panels along the way.
Marshall Rogers’ art caused a sensation when he did Batman for Detective Comics. Later he was drafted for the first story of the 1989 Batman comic strip.
Before Dick Sprang joined the Bob Kane Studio he had partnered with Ed Kressy and Norman Fallon.
It is worth noting that every 2026 Harvey Awards Hall of Fame inductee has connections to the Batmancomic book either as the publisher (Kahn) or as writers (O’Neil, Robbins, and Miller) or artists (all but O’Neil and Kahn).
Joe Grunenwald at The Beat has the entire 2026 Harvey Award nominees and winners.
