​The nominees for the 2021 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards – the most prestigious set of awards given within the US comic book and graphic novel industries – were announced on June 9. This year’s judging panel consisted of comics retailer Marco Davanzo, Comic-Con International board member Shelley Fruchey, librarian Pamela Jackson (San Diego State University), creator/publisher Keithan Jones, educator Alonso Nuñez, and comics historian Jim Thompson. As usual, the ballot recognizes an eclectic mix of material, with awards in thirty-two categories, including the following three young-reader categories:

Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 8)

• Bear, by Ben Queen and Joe Todd-Stanton (Archaia/BOOM!)
• Cat Kid Comic Club, by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic Graphix)
• Donut Feed the Squirrels, by Mika Song (RH Graphic/RH Children’s Books)
• Kodi, by Jared Cullum (Top Shelf)
• Lift, by Minh Lê and Dan Santat (Little, Brown Young Readers)
• Our Little Kitchen, by Jillian Tamaki (Abrams Books for Young Readers)

Best Publication for Kids (ages 9-12)

• Doodleville, by Chad Sell (Knopf/BFYR/RH Children’s Books)
• Go with the Flow, by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann (First Second/Macmillan)
• Mister Invincible: Local Hero, by Pascal Jousselin (Magnetic Press)
• Snapdragon, by Kat Leyh (First Second/Macmillan)
• Superman Smashes the Klan, by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru (DC), reviewed here on 7/21/2020
• Twins, by Varian Johnson and Shannon Wright (Scholastic Graphix)

Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17)

• Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks & Scones, by Ngozi Ukazu (First Second/Macmillan)
• Displacement, by Kiku Hughes (First Second/Macmillan)
• Dragon Hoops, by Gene Luen Yang (First Second/Macmillan), reviewed here 3/25/2020 
• Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence, by Joel Christian Gill (Oni Press)
• A Map to the Sun, by Sloane Leong (First Second/Macmillan)
• When Stars are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed (Dial Books)

Wow, what a list!

This year’s ballot looks smart and interesting to me. As always, I could gripe about oversights, omissions, and puzzling choices. Of course! I’ve been an Eisner judge myself (2013), so I know that the job is challenging, even overwhelming. I get it. The Eisners represent several different communities (after all, they are not a guild prize like the Oscars or the Grammys) and it’s not easy for the yearly ballot to satisfy everyone. That said, I am learning a lot by looking up this year’s nominees.  

In addition to the nominees in the dedicated young-reader categories above, there are nominations in many other categories that may interest followers of children’s and young adult comics. What follows is not an exhaustive list, but just a few items that I noticed:

Best Single Issue: 

• Stanley’s Ghost: A Halloween Adventure, by Jeff Balke, Paul Storrie, and Dave Alvarez (Storm Kids)

Best Continuing Series

• Usagi Yojimbo, by Stan Sakai (IDW)

Best Reality-Based Work

• Dragon Hoops, by Gene Luen Yang

Best Graphic Memoir

• Banned Book Club, by Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, and Ko Hyung-Ju (Iron Circus)
• When Stars Are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

Best Graphic Album—Reprint

• Herobear and the Kid: The Heritage, by Mike Kunkel (Astonish Factory)

Best Adaptation from Another Medium

• Superman Smashes the Klan, by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru​

Best U.S. Edition of International Material

• Gamayun Tales I: An Anthology of Modern Russian Folk Tales, by Alexander Utkin, translated by Lada Morozova (Nobrow)
• Irena Books 2-3, by Jean-David Morvan, Severine Tréfouël, and David Evrard, translated by Dan Christensen (Magnetic Press)
• When You Look Up, by Decur, translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts (Enchanted Lion Books)

Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books

• Little Lulu: The Fuzzythingus Poopi, by John Stanley et al., edited by Frank Young and Tom Devlin (Drawn & Quarterly), reviewed here 1/18/2021

Best Writer/Artist

• Pascal Jousselin, Mister Invincible: Local Hero (Magnetic Press)
• Trung Le Nguyen, The Magic Fish (RH Graphic/RH Children’s Books)
• Gene Luen Yang, Dragon Hoops

Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team

• Bertrand Gatignol, Pistouvi (Magnetic Press)

Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art)

• Jared Cullum, Kodi
• Decur, When You Look Up

On a personal note, I'm honored that the book I co-edited with Bart Beaty, Comics Studies: A Guidebook (Rutgers University Press), has been nominated for an Eisner in the category Best Academic/Scholarly Work. This is a testimony to the superb work of our co-contributors: Jan Baetens, Isaac Cates, Mel Gibson, Ian Gordon, Martha Kuhlman, Frenchy Lunning, Brian MacAuley, Matt McAllister, Andrei Molotiu, Philip Nel, Roger Sabin, Kalervo Sinervo, Marc Singer, Theresa Tensuan, Shannon Tien, Darren Wershler, Gillian Whitlock, and Benjamin Woo.

​Our Guidebook is in excellent company. The other nominees for Best Academic/Scholarly Work are:

• Comic Art in Museums, edited by Kim A. Munson (University Press of Mississippi), a groundbreaking volume that I feel lucky to be part of
• The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, by Rebecca Wanzo (New York UP), a stunning book, and winner of the 2021 Kovács Book Award given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies
• Webcomics, by Sean Kleefeld (Bloomsbury), a terrific resource that I have reviewed recently and look forward to using in my teaching ASAP
• Who Understands Comics: Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension, by Neil Cohn (Bloomsbury), a vital contribution to the research on comics literacy

More than one of these books has fundamentally changed the way I look at my field. Again, readers, I urge you to check out these thought-provoking works. Also, check out the work in the other comics scholarship category, that of Best Comics-Related Book:

• American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason, by Brett Dakin (Comic House/Lev Gleason)
• Ditko Shrugged: The Uncompromising Life of the Artist Behind Spider-Man and the Rise of Marvel Comics, by David Currie (Hermes Press)
• Drawing Fire: The Editorial Cartoons of Bill Mauldin, edited by Todd DePastino (Pritzker Military Museum & Library)
• The History of EC Comics, by Grant Geissman (TASCHEN)
• Invisible Men: The Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books, by Ken Quattro (Yoe Books/IDW)
• Masters of British Comic Art, by David Roach (2000AD)

There is so much to learn here!

Lately I've been reviewing Bildungsromane about young witches in training (here, here, and here). I thought An Embarrassment of Witches would be one of those, but it really isn't. Yes, it's a coming-of-age story, but it's also a grad school comedy about the experiences of two fairly new adults (not young adults in the adolescent sense) whose loved ones are high-powered academics or wannabes living in a rarified intellectual world ripe for satire. It happens that this world is one in which magic is commonplace, one where you can go to grad school to study "metamystics," and where shopping malls include businesses like Taco Spell and Aleistercrowley & Witch. But the story does not focus on learning witchery or spellcraft. It deals with applying for jobs and school, with internships, and with tense people having relationships at a bemusing transitional moment in their lives. It reads like a Friends-style sitcom combined with an academic novel, but is not as acrid as that might sound. Tonally, it reminds me of John Allison's splendid college comedy, Giant Days; its character writing is just as adult and just as piquant, and it conveys a similar sense of benign absurdity.

Art-wise, An Embarrassment of Witches​ is a formally inventive knockout. The character designs are sharp and distinctive, the visual worldbuilding is a hoot, and the book looks like no other. Goldstein dispenses with gutters and borders, favoring jampacked full-bleed pages in which the panels rub right up against each other. The results are a bit overwhelming due to sheer density, but that jibes with the book's emphasis on complex social dynamics. It also makes the book a delight to page through again and again (the disorienting, Escher-like cover is just a hint of the pleasures and challenges inside). The limited color palette — two purples, a near-turquoise green, celeste blue, and a kind of mellow yellow — may sound iffy in the abstract, but works brilliantly in practice, making the book into a cohesive world of its own. All this is to say that the wittiness of the story is matched by an outpouring of visual wit. In short, An Embarrassment of Witches​ is a full-on delight.​​

​Another graphic novel about witches (see here and here)!

In this middle-grade urban fantasy, the first in a planned trilogy, orphaned tween Effie is adopted by her eccentric aunts Selimene and Carlota, herbalists and acupuncturists who live in a quaint Victorian house in Flatbush. As it turns out, her aunts are also “miracle makers,” witches whose powers can bend reality and time—and Effie discovers that those powers run in the family. When a vaguely Taylor Swift-like pop star idolized by Effie runs afoul of some ancient magic and needs a cure, Selimene and Carlota take Effie into their confidence, and her training in magic begins. A clever, if rigged, story ensues, jammed with business, as Effie bonds with her aunts, makes friends at school, discovers the hazards of having power without knowledge, and becomes disillusioned with her former idol—but also saves her. The story abounds in Harry Potterisms and other well-worn tropes, and the frantic plot works against the bids for soulful characterization: for example, Effie begins as an embittered foster child with a chip on her shoulder, but then abruptly embraces living with her aunts, leaving all resentments and uncertainties aside. Hints of past unhappiness and family intrigue involving her late mother remain vague, perhaps foreshadowing sequels. There are plenty of loose ends.

Author Sophie Escabasse’s style seesaws between joyous energy and fussy detailing. Her layouts are restless and dynamic, the traditional grids often enlivened by inset panels, frame breaks, and diagonals. There’s an enjoyable, exploratory quality about all this—the delight of seeing what a page can do—though the cluttered detail and overbusy coloring bog things down a bit. (On some pages, backgrounds are grayed out to bring the characters forward, which I think helps.) The characters are all distinct, with different silhouettes, head shapes, and faces—so different that they almost seem to have been drawn by different artists. Effie’s aunts are the most vividly realized and charming; in particular, Selimene, mercurial and feisty, stands out from the general busyness, with a comical design that recall Escabasse’s avowed influence André Franquin. 

Overall, Witches of Brooklyn strikes me as pretty good but also very familiar—so, I’m lukewarm toward it, despite its many good, smart moments. The sequels, I hope, will aim for less obvious plot-rigging, more rooted and consistent characterization, a sharper sense of what magic means and can do in this story-world, and, visually, not so much over-egging of the settings and details. As is, this first book crams in about three books’ worth of material and potential—I’d like to see Escabasse explore her world at a more deliberate pace. The second book reportedly will drop at the end of August.

I guess you say that this review is part of an occasional series (heh).

In an unnamed land—a marvelous, culturally syncretic fantasy world—two young women undertake a magical quest and, as they go, learn how to care for one another. One of them, Lelek, volatile and enigmatic, is a witch who has lost half her soul. The other, her newfound friend (well, at first her kidnappee) Sanja, is determined to help find it. Love blooms between them—a matter of blushing shyness at first, but then owned and enjoyed with a winning matter-of-factness. As they travel, Lelek and Sanja scare up money by challenging local witches to duels, but often end up learning from those same witches; their travels uncover woman-centered communities and hints of matriarchal lore and magic. The larger culture hints at witch-hunting and misogyny, and this leads to a harrowing twist in the final act, but also, by roundabout means, to the resolution of a mystery and a ringing affirmation of Lelek, Sanja, and everyone they’ve befriended en route.

Originally published by Kevin Czap’s micro-press Czap Books in 2016, Jessi Zabarsky’s Witchlight is a gorgeous and soulful feast of cartooning in a clear-line but vigorous, rounded style (which reminds me a bit of Czap’s own). It grows more confident in its linework and layouts as it goes. Beautifully colored by Geov Chouteau, the pages sing with an assured minimalism and harmony. I suppose the backstory and conflicts could be established more firmly—the plot might be clearer—but on the other hand, I enjoyed immediately diving back into the book to better understand its dreamlike premises. The book’s feminist, antiracist, and queer-positive ethos are a part of that dream and arise organically from the world Zabarsky has created; she uses her secondary world to imagine a better one. The utopian vibe is complicated by emotional and social nuances and an earned sense of loss and struggle. More than anything, Witchlight radiates a sense of love, offhand intimacy, and the thrills of self-discovery. Zabarsky clearly delights in her characters. She is a great cartoonist, with another graphic novel promised from RH Graphic by year’s end. I can't wait!