Steve Gerber and Don Rosa have been selected to receive the 2013 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.
“The premise of this award is to recognize writers for a body of work that has not received its rightful reward and/or recognition,” Evanier explains. “That was what Jerry Robinson intended as his way of remembering his friend, Bill Finger. Bill is still kind of the industry poster boy for writers not receiving proper reward or recognition.” Evanier also notes the appropriateness of this year’s selections: “Steve Gerber was one of the most influential writers of his day, and his work has stood the rest of time. Don Rosa is now retired from producing his acclaimed work with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. He also drew the comics, but we honor him for the excellence of his stories, which will forever be reprinted around the world. Also, we liked the idea of having an ‘all-duck’ Finger ceremony.”

Some informations about Don Rosa

[He] got his start in fanzines, with “The Pertwillaby Papers,” a comic strip for his college newspaper in Kentucky. An avid collector of comics, he chose for a time to write and draw as a hobby and to make his livelihood in his family’s tile business. In 1986, though, he had the opportunity to write and draw stories of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, his favorite characters when in the hands of the legendary Carl Barks. His meticulous, carefully researched work caught on big, at first in America and then overseas, where he was hailed for expanding on the foundation laid by Barks. Particularly popular was a 12-part series he began in 1991, “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck,” which filled in many details of the character’s past. That series, along with Rosa’s other tales, has been reprinted around the world as much as any comic book of the last quarter-century. Rosa has now retired from creating new stories, due to failing eyesight and disputes with his publisher over compensation.

And now the prize:

The Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing was created in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. Each year, the awards committee selects two recipients—one living and one deceased—who have produced a significant body of work in the comics field. The award is named for William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first, and some say most important, writer of Batman. Many have called him the “unsung hero” of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure, but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics. The Finger Award recipients are chosen by a committee chaired by Mark Evanier, and the awards are presented at the Eisner Awards ceremony.

(source – pdf | read also: stevegerber.com | via Luca Boschi)