E. Nelson Bridwell

I was delighted to read in Mark Evanier's News From ME that the late E. Nelson Bridwell will be recognized at this year's Comic-Con. Bridwell and writer Mike Friedrich will be 2019's worthy recipients of The Bill Finger Award For Excellence In Comic Book Writing. Here's a brief description of what that award means:

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 thanks to a proposal by the late comic book legend Jerry Robinson, who knew and worked with Finger. As Evanier explains, "We need to point out those wonderful bodies of work by writers who have not received their rightful reward and/or recognition...When this award began, the late Bill Finger received almost no credit for his role in the creation of Batman. He does now, but there are still plenty of writers who have not received their proper rewards and/or recognition."

Bridwell certainly deserves the honor. As a writer and staffer at DC Comics from the '60s to the '80s, E. Nelson Bridwell was a role model for fans who wanted to grow up (sort of) and have a hand in creating new adventures of the characters we loved. Bridwell had been one of us; he was a voracious reader, and he immersed himself in all manner of mythologies, including superhero comics, as a kid in the '40s. The things Bridwell learned and remembered--and he remembered everything--would serve him well when his early '70s editorial duties put him in charge of selecting reprints for DC's 100-Page Super Spectaculars.



The original Captain Marvel was Bridwell's favorite. Many years later, Bridwell would write a number of memorable Captain Marvel tales, and I hope the Marvel Family stories he created (especially those he did with artist Don Newton) will be reprinted some time soon. 



Even before his start at DC in 1965, Bridwell created one lasting contribution to pop culture: an often-imitated gag starring The Lone Ranger and Tonto, published in Mad magazine in 1958:



See, that's pop culture immortality right there.

But it's still just a footnote in Bridwell's career. Bridwell's knowledge of all manner of trivia and significa gave him an unparalleled mental resource of facts both well-known and obscure, encompassing an encyclopedic command of seemingly everything, including the Bible, Greek mythology, Roman mythology, the classics, the pulps, theater, movies, radio, and, I betcha, every comic book ever published. ENB knew stuff, a lot of stuff, and his enthusiasm for the many things he knew and loved never dimmed, never lost its exuberant, fannish luster. 

He is universally recalled as a nice guy, friendly and encouraging to other fans, eager to share his expertise and delight. I only met him once, when I was a 16-year-old wannabe comics writer at the Super DC Con in New York in 1976. But that brief meeting was sufficient to reinforce my impression of him from DC letters columns, and to agree with that universal assessment. A nice guy. Smart, likable, one of us. A comics fan made good.



As cool as all of that is, that's not what qualifies E. Nelson Bridwell for this overdue acknowledgement of his body of work as a comics writer. Bridwell's affection for these characters, his respect for the work of creators who came before him, ignited the sheer joy within his own stories. The Secret Six, a short-lived comic book he created in 1968, was the subject of my first freelance writing sale, a Secret Six retrospective I sold to Amazing Heroes magazine in 1984. His above-mentioned Captain Marvel work for the Shazam! back-up strip in 1980s issues of World's Finest Comics should rank among the World's Mightiest Mortal's all-time best. I still really need to dive into Bridwell's work on the Super Friends comic book. 




But my favorite Bridwell creation will always be The Inferior Five, a superhero parody that was proudly silly and infectious (as we discussed here). Bridwell passed in 1987, taken by cancer when he was only 55 years old. I wish he'd gotten more acclaim in his lifetime, and I wish he were still around to enjoy acclaim now...and to create more. More E. Nelson Bridwell would be nice. The Bill Finger Award is a step in the right direction. It couldn't go to a nicer guy.

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