Awards

Seven amazing comics retailers were nominated for the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer award, including stores from all over the United States. We have personal knowledge of many of these retailers and can testify that they all exemplify the passion and love of comics that is the heartbeat of the industry The winner will be announced tonight at the Eisner Awards.

None of this year's Russ Manning Award nominees created a bigger splash than Nate Simpson with the debut of his comic Non-Player. With it's gorgeous, fully imagined artwork it was the toast of the internet for a few weeks and sold out right away. LIke may recent Manning nominees, Simpson works in video game design -- not only artwork but character and story concepts; his resume includes Demigod, Space Siege, Supreme Commander 2, GoPets. the Starfleet Command series and dozens more.

Continuing our look at this year's Russ Manning Award nominees, we come to Paul Roman Martinez, aka Kopetkai. He's the creator of the dieselpunk webcomic The Adventures of the 19XX. According to his bio, he's a California-based graphic designer/web designer who works on his comics in his spare time. The 19xx combines his interests in art and history with a pretty nifty premise:

Continuing our spotlight on this year's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer awards, we come to David Marquez, artist on SYNDROME and DAYS MISSING Vol 2 for Archaia. London-born but living in Texas, Marquez was on track to become a high school teacher before deciding to pursue his love of art and applying for a job in the animation department on A SCANNER DARKLY. Since then he's worked on a a variety of indie comics projects.

Trolling the internet while on vacation, I was chilled down to the bone (impressive given the 100+ temperatures in Texas) to see on the announcement on the Center for Cartoon Studies website that the Xeric Award would be no more. Since 1992, Peter Laird of the amazeballs black and white comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (self-published in 1984) has granted two awards a year to a cartoonist or project for its excellence.

Continuing our look at this year's Russ Manning Award Most Promising Newcomer nominees, we have Adam Hines, author of the extraordinary DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG, a meditation on consciousness that uses a dense, collage art technique and expressionist storytelling. It's set in a world where animals can talk, but any idea that this is going to be a cutesy anthropomorphic tale should go right out the window. Duncan has already won a Xeric Grant, the LA Times Book Prize for best graphic novel and the first Lynd Ward Prize, and it's nominated for the Harvey Award, making it one of the most honored graphic novels of recent years.

Each year the Russ Manning Award is presented to a new artist of merit. Past winners include Jeff Smith, Dave Stevens, Scott McCloud, and many other future Hall of Famers. We thought we'd take a look at this year's nominees and show off some nice art along the way. Up first: Janet K. Lee.

The 2011 Harvey Awards nominations have been announced and after a few years of...puzzling choices that seemed to reflect small voting blocs, these are pretty solid.

More great Canadian cartoonists were honored Saturday, with the presentation of this year's Joe Shuster Awards at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo with...

Bob Haney and Del Connell are the writers selected to received this year's Finger Award. The Finger Award is presented each year to writers, one living, one dead, who for whatever reason, have not received the recognition they should have for their creative efforts. It's named for Bill Finger, who created much of the Batman mythos we see today while Bob Kane got the credit.

The CCI folks have announced the 2011 nominees for Most Promising Newcomer, an art award that recognizes up and coming talent. Past winners include Dave Stevens, Jeff Smith, and David Petersen, so they have a pretty good track record. The nominees were selected by a committee and the winner (selected by past winners and Russ Manning assistants) will be announced July 22 during the Eisner award ceremony.

The 2011 Reuben Awards for the best in cartooning and related fields were presented at the annual National Cartoonists Society meeting on Saturday. Richard Thompson beat out Glen Keane and Stephan Pastis for THE Reuben as cartoonist of the year. Jill Thompson won the Comic Book category for BEASTS OF BURDEN, and Joyce Farmer won the graphic novel category for SPECIAL EXITS, while Jeff Parker and Steve Kelley's DUSTIN won for best comic strip.