One of the two recipients this year of The Bill Finger Award was a fine gent named Del Connell, who probably wrote more comic books than you've read…and a point I forgot to make either in the press release or in my presentation was this: These included some of the best-selling comics ever published, particularly the adaptations of the more popular Disney movies. Some of those comics went into five and six printings and sold well into the millions.
A key reason for this award is to put the spotlight on a comic book author whose body of work has been unfairly overlooked. Del was not under-credited. He was simply not credited at all. So we're pleased that the award is spawning articles like this one which tells people a little about this extraordinary man and his accomplishments.
Quoted in the piece, by the way, is another anonymous writer for Western Publishing — a man named Vic Lockman. It is often assumed, and I think it's still in the Guinness book, that the late Paul S. Newman was the most prolific writer of comic books ever. This may be so. But if anyone ever topped Newman, it was probably Lockman…and I'll bet less than 5% of the folks reading this who consider themselves comic book experts have ever heard of the guy. Just as most of you never heard of Del Connell. Alas, both Lockman and Connell worked for a company that didn't credit their talents or even retain records of who did what, so the majority of their work remains unidentified.