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This week the nominees for the Cartoonists of the Year, aka THE Reuben, presented yearly by the National Cartoonists Society, were announced and they are:

Lynda Barry
Stephan Pastis
Hilary Price
Michael Ramirez
Mark Tatulli

Partis and Price were nominated last year (Roz Chast was the winner.) This is the first time I ever remember there being five nominees for this award, which is generally considered the highest honor a US cartoonist can receive. The recognition of Barry in the category is notable, given her long association with alternative comics. Tom Spurgeon has some much better informed commentary here.

The Silver Reubens, or divisional awards were also announced earlier this month. Marvel, Boom!, DC and Dark Horse all got nominated in the comics categories. Dark Horse got all three of the Outstanding Graphic Novel nominations, which is a little odd, but all three of the books — Nanjing The Burning City, The New Deal, and Two Brothers — were quite excellent. Dark Horse has been putting out excellent original graphic novels in recent years, with bold subjects and top notch art.

The rest of the nominees are:

NEWSPAPER STRIPS:
“Lio” – Mark Tatulli
“Pajama Diaries,” by Terri Libenson
“Pearls Before Swine,” by Stephan Pastis

POLITICAL CARTOONS:
Mike Luckovich
Michael Ramirez
Ann Telnaes

NEWSPAPER PANELS:

“The Argyle Sweater,” by Scott Hilburn
“Bizarro,” by Dan Piraro
“The Flying McCoys,” by Glenn and Gary McCoy
“Reality Check,” by Dave Whamond

FEATURE ANIMATION
“Boy and the World”
“Inside Out”
“The Peanuts Movie”

TELEVISION ANIMATION
“Tumble Leaf” (Amazon) — Drew Hodges
“Puffin Rock” (Netflix) — Maurice Joyce
“Zack & Quack” (Nick Jr.) — Gili Dolev and Yvette Kaplan

GAG CARTOONS
Glen Le Lievre
Benjamin Schwartz
David Sipress

ADVERTISING/PRODUCT ILLUSTRATION
Ray Alma
Anton Emdin
Luke McGarry

GREETING CARDS
Jim Benton
Scott Nickel
Robin Rawlings

COMIC BOOKS
Giant Days (Boom Box) — Max Sarin
Prez (DC Comics) — Ben Caldwell
Squirrel Girl (Marvel) — Erica Henderson

GRAPHIC NOVELS
“Nanjing the Burning City” (Dark Horse) — Ethan Young
“New Deal” (Dark Horse) — Jonathan Case
“Two Brothers” (Dark Horse) — Gabriel Ba

MAGAZINE FEATURE/ILLUSTRATION
Anton Emdin
Rich Powell
Julia Suits

ONLINE LONG FORM COMICS
Drive (Dave Kellett)
The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo (Drew Weing)
Octopus Pie (Meredith Gran)

ONLINE SHORT-FORM COMICS
Bouletcorp (Boulet)
Kevin & Kell (Bill Holbrook)
Sheldon (Dave Kellett)

BOOK ILLUSTRATION
“Smick” — Juana Medina
“Sidewalk Flowers” — Sydney Smith
“The First Case” — Gitte Spee

The winners will be announced at the Reuben weekend, May 29029th in Memphis, TN. More details on that here.The key art, above, is by Tom Richmond and portrays L to R, top row: Bruce Higdon, Sergio Aragonés, Mo Willems (Reubens emcee), Jeff Smith, Terry Moore. Second row: David Apatoff, Jenny Robb, Luke McGarry, Matt Diffee, Lynn Johnston, Paul Coker Jr. Front: Jan Eliot, Maria Scrivan, Deborah Peyton.

PS: The NCS website announced the Silver Reuben nominations in the increasingly popular “graphic” format, meaning there was no text list of the nominees. This is annoying for a journalist. So I stole the list from Michael Cavna and formatted it in my own style. I agree the visual style makes a nice way to see who’s who, but information needs to be free, or at least in .txt format.

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