Eisner Award Nominations 2025

​The nominations for this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (celebrating work published in 2024) were announced a week ago, on May 15. ​As ever, I'm looking up and seeking out things to read. It’s an excellent, wide-ranging ballot, with props to this year’s judges: editor, writer, and historian Robert V. Conte; librarian and ALA comics advocate Kacy Helwick; critic, editor, and podcaster Meg Lemke; comics retailer and ComicsPro board member Eitan Manhoff; and scholar and professor Rocco Versaci. I know from experience that judging the Eisners is one hell of a job.

​I’m not conversant with everything, or even most of the things, on this  year's ballot. Who could be? What follows is a personal inventory that I first posted to Facebook the day after the ballot was announced. Bear in mind that the ballot includes more than 150 words, divided into 32 categories: 

• The number of categories in which I knew not a single nominee: eight.
• Categories in which I knew only one nominee: ten.
• Categories in which I had read all the nominees: one (Best Graphic Album—New).
• The number of omissions I was sad to see: half a dozen. (This isn’t sniping; there are always disappointing omissions every year, and I bet some of the judges feel this way too. That's in the nature of awards. Maybe I can list some omitted works I love in the comments, below?)
• The number of happy surprises: at least half a dozen.

Again, it’s a phenomenal list. I'll try to read every nominee in the young readers’ categories (below) in time to vote by the deadline, June 5 (note that prospective new Eisner voters must apply by May 29). Besides the young readers' categories, I've also listed the categories for publications about​ comics, which are particularly important to me.

LA Public Library, here I come!

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Best Publication for Early Readers
​Damn, I haven't read any of these yet!
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• ​Bog Myrtle, by Sid Sharp (Annick Press)
• ​Club Microbe, by Elise Gravel, translated by Montana Kane (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Hilda and Twig Hide from the Rain, by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye)
• Night Stories: Folktales from Latin America, by Liniers (TOON Books/Astra Books)
• Poetry Comics, by Grant Snider (Chronicle Books)

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Best Publication for Kids

• ​How It All Ends, by Emma Hunsinger (Greenwillow/HarperCollins)
• Next Stop, by Debbie Fong (Random House Graphic)
• Plain Jane and the Mermaid, by Vera Brosgol (First Second/Macmillan). Reviewed here on 6/27/2024.
• Weirdo, by Tony Weaver, Jr. and Jes & Cin Wibowo (First Second/Macmillan)
• Young Hag and the Witches’ Quest, by Isabel Greenberg (Abrams Fanfare)

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Best Publication for Teens

• ​Ash’s Cabin, by Jen Wang (First Second/Macmillan). Reviewed here on 12/05/2024.
• Big Jim and the White Boy, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson (Ten Speed Graphic)
• The Deep Dark, by Molly Knox Ostertag (Scholastic)
• The Gulf, by Adam de Souza (Tundra Books)
• Lunar New Year Love Story, by Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham (First Second/Macmillan). The only other nominee in this category that I've read so far.
• Out of Left Field, by Jonah Newman (Andrews McMeel)

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Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism
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• The Beat, edited by Heidi MacDonald and others, https://www.comicsbeat.com
• ICv2: The Business of Pop Culture, edited by Milton Griepp, icv2.com
• Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, edited by Susan Kirtley (The Ohio State University Press), https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/701​ 
• SOLRAD: The Online Literary Magazine for Comics, edited by Daniel Elkin (Fieldjouse Press), www.solrad.co
• Zdarsky Comics News, edited by Allison O’Toole (Chip Zdarsky), physical newsletter, information at https://www.zcnmagazine.com 

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Best Comics-Related Book
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• ​American Comic Book Chronicles: 1945-49, by Keith Dallas, John Wells, Richard Arndt, and Kurt Mitchell (TwoMorrows)
• Kate Carew: America’s First Great Woman Cartoonist, by Eddie Campbell with Christine Chambers (Fantagraphics)
• Q&A, by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Reading Love and Rockets, by Marc Sobel (Fantagraphics)
• Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund, by Caitlin McGurk (Fantagraphics)
• Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Ultimate History, edited by Daniel Kothenschulte with text by David Gerstein and J. B. Kaufman (TASCHEN)

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Best Academic/Scholarly Work
A great crop this year! Groundbreaking work all around. I can't be objective about this (two of the nominees are in a series that I help edit), but once again I'm overjoyed by this roundup:
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• Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture, edited by Jonathan Najarian (University Press of Mississippi)
• Drawing (in) the Feminine: Bande Dessinée and Women, edited by Margaret C. Flinn (The Ohio State University Press)
• From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics, by Neale Barnholden (University Press of Mississippi)
• Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics, by Daniel Worden (The Ohio State University Press)
• Singular Sensations: A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States, by Michelle Ann Abate (Rutgers University Press)