Holy Harvey Awards, Batman! Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, David Mazzucchelli Set for Hall of Fame Honors (Exclusive)

Frank Miller and a host of other key Batman creators, living and deceased, are set to be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

Miller, along with Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns inker Klaus Janson, Batman: Year One artist David Mazzucchelli, and longtime DC president and publisher Jenette Kahn will honored at the 38th Harvey Awards ceremony to be held during New York Comic Con on Friday, Oct. 9.

Inducted posthumously will be Robin and Joker co-creator Jerry Robinson, Golden Age Batman artist Dick Sprang, 1960s Batman artist and Batgirl co-creator Carmine Infantino, writer-artist and Man-Bat co-creator Frank Robbins, legendary 1970s writer Denny O’Neil, inker Dick Giordano, key Batman artist Jim Aparo (who drew the infamous “Death in the Family” storyline), 1970s Detective Comics artist Marshall Rogers, and Tim Sale, artist of Batman: The Long Halloween, among other turn of the century Bat-works.

“As 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of both The Dark Knight Returns and Daredevil: Born Again, we have long planned to induct Frank, one of the most visionary creators in our industry and beyond, alongside his collaborators Klaus Janson and David Mazzucchelli, into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame. Over the past 38 years of the Harveys, these three have won multiple Harvey Awards, and honoring their industry contributions together was a natural fit,” said Harvey Awards co-chair John Lind in an email to The Hollywood Reporter.

He also wrote, “We also wanted to recognize Jenette Kahn in this year’s class because she was a visionary publisher for DC—her leadership in the mid-1980s enabled creators to produce seminal works like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.”

With Batman celebrating anniversaries, and with the character still setting sales records and having an uplifting impact on the comic book industry, “we had the perfect opportunity to posthumously induct a selection of fantastic creators who also made lasting contributions to Batman, among their other industry achievements,” Lind said.

For the first time, the Hall of Fame inductions will be split between an afternoon panel open to all NYCC badge holders and the invite-only Harvey Awards ceremony in the evening.

The Harvey Awards are one of the two longest-running awards in American comics. The annual ceremony, held at NYCC since 2017, presents awards across a nimble seven categories designed to focus on the creative work as a whole and not the individual. Among the categories are awards for best YA, best manga, and book of the year. There is also a best adaptation category, which honors source material adapted from comics into other media, including film, video games, animation and stage plays.

The awards are named after Harvey Kurtzman, the influential writer-artist-editor behind many EC Comics titles as well as the co-founder of Mad magazine.

“EC Comics were a huge influence on me, and Harvey Kurtzman was obviously a key contributor to what made those books so fantastic! I consider Harvey a master cartoonist, and his use of satire really paved the way for entertainment as a whole,” said Miller in a statement. “With the anniversary of The Dark Knight Returns and Daredevil: Born Again, it couldn’t be more fitting for me to be inducted alongside Klaus, Dick, Denny, David, and Jenette.”

Larry O’Neil, son of Denny O’Neil, said his father grew up in an era where working in the comic book field was looked down upon. Certainly it was not an industry that engendered award recognition.

“When my father started writing comic books, it was viewed as a disreputable way to make a living,” O’Neil said. “At least he felt that way. His mostly-blue-collar family didn’t approve very much, but he brought their work ethic to the task. He valued being a professional, whose first job was to make the deadline and generate enough pages to keep his young family off the soup line. Of course, he took pride in his work. He hoped that whoever paid the fifteen cents would be entertained, and maybe an occasional reader might even notice a story was surprisingly pretty good. Even poignant. But my father inherited a lot of self-deprecating humility from that Midwestern family, so he didn’t say that last part out loud very often. Whatever his ambitions were, he certainly didn’t imagine a future with any awards like this one.”

The hosts of the 2026 Harvey Awards ceremony are Brad and Lisa Gullickson from the Comic Book Couples Counseling podcast. The Harvey Awards steering committee is co-chaired by Lind, Nellie Kurtzman, who is Kurtzman’s daughter, and Chip Mosher. Camilla Di Persia, Chris D’Lando, and Kaitlin Lee Garza of ReedPop are coordinating this year’s awards.