Eisner Awards 2014: 9 Picks for Your Consideration

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With only a few days left for voting in the 2014 Will Eisner Awards, procrastinatin’ comics professionals are probably poring over their ballots, wondering which artists, writers and comics to bestow their votes. (Note: Online voting for the Eisner Awards ends on Friday, June 13, and winners will be announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2014 in July)

Because I can, I took to Twitter today to share some of my picks for this year’s Eisner Awards voting. I didn’t announce my picks in ALL categories — just the ones I felt particularly passionate about spreading the word about. So in case you missed it, here are my nine picks for comics/creators that deserve your vote, and a few words about the manga that were nominated this year, because they’re all winners that deserve your time, money and attention.

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot): Demeter by Becky Cloonan (Self-published, available on ComiXology, or in print from Lounak Distribution)
Why? Well, this haunting one-shot about a young couple who discover the price of cheating death is a winner on several counts. The art is simply lovely — Cloonan’s masterful use of line/shadow sets a sensuous mood and sets the stage for a dark and heartbreaking, but satisfying story.

 

Best Publication for Kids (ages 8-12): The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks (Dark Horse Comics)
Originally published as a webcomic, The Adventures of Superhero Girl follows the misadventures of a teen girl who’s very strong, but despite her best intentions, falls just a tad short in the superhero-ing department… or at least she finds it’s not as whiz-bang exciting as she thought it would be.

Full of wry humor, The Adventures of Superhero Girl is a fun read for all ages that’ll make kids laugh and leave adults with a goofy grin on their faces.

 

Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17): March Book 1 by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions)
Based on the memoirs of Representative John Lewis, a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement that rocked the United States in the 1950’s-1960’s, March Book 1 (the first book of a planned trilogy) follows Lewis from his childhood in rural Alabama to his first meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King, and the events leading up to the March on Washington in 1963. Powell’s artwork and Lewis and Aydin’s narrative are a potent mix that brings these pivotal moments of American history to life. The fact that it’s all true makes it that much more powerful.

 

Best Reality-Based Work – Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor (Fantagraphics)

Speaking of history, Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree focuses on another pivotal moment in American history — but this time the revolution wasn’t televised, it was AMPLIFIED and you could dance to it.

Drawn and presented like a 1970’s comic book to match the era it portrays, Hip Hop Family Tree introduces readers to the forgotten heroes, the superstars, the villains and the victims, the artists and the auteurs, the legends and the occasionally stranger than fiction/”you can’t make this shit up” stories that lead to the creation of hip hop culture: from DJ culture, rap music, break dancing and graffiti art and beyond. Piskor weaves in all kinds of clever details into this graphic novel/oral history book, like the off-register art on newsprint-colored paper that both represents room-shaking bass and pays homage to pulpy comic books, and the numerous cameos by hip hop legends like Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Flash and much more.

A completely delightful book that was one of the best things I read all year. I can’t wait for the release of Hip Hop Family Tree Volume 2, which is due out this summer.

 

Best Graphic Album – New: The Property by Rutu Modan (Drawn & Quarterly)

Mica is a young Israeli woman who accompanies her grandmother on a trip Warsaw — but they’re not just there to sight-see. No, they’re there to reclaim what her grandmother claims is lost family property, a valuable piece of real estate that was ceded when the family was forced to leave Poland in the chaos of World War II. But things are rarely as simple as they seem, and Mica discovers that her grandmother’s reasons for returning to Warsaw are much more complex than she ever realized.

Modan, the creator of the award-winning graphic novel Exit Wounds, makes good use of her crisp, understated art style to tell a memorable story about love, loss, and family. It’s complete in one volume, so you won’t be on the hook for volumes and volumes of story.

 

Best U.S. Edition of International Material: Goddam This War! by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Pierre Verney (Fantagraphics)
Much like Shigeru Mizuki’s Onwards Toward Our Noble Deaths and Showa: A Tale of Japan, Goddam This War! shows the senseless horror and the war-weary black humor of a soldier’s life on and off the battlefield. Through Tardi and Verney’s words and pictures, readers can experience World War I in Europe from a human level, while also seeing the broad strokes of history that pitted country vs. country, man vs. man into a war to end all wars (until the next war). See it for yourself — Read a 16-page preview of Goddam This War.

 

Best U.S. Edition of International Material: Asia – Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio (Fantagraphics)
This category is the de-facto “manga” category of the Eisner Awards, so it was hard to pick just one out of the five very worthy and notable nominees. But in the end, the winner in my book was this seminal work by one of the true masters of the manga world, Moto Hagio.

Heart of Thomas was originally published in 1974, and is credited as being one of the key works of shojo manga/shonen-ai genre (which later evolved into the much saucier boys love / yaoi manga genre that we all know/love today). It’s one of those stories that was often talked about in manga circles, but until recently, was not available officially in English. Fantagraphics remedied this situation by publishing Heart of Thomas in a lovely oversized hardcover edition that is well worth picking up.

However, a word of caution to yaoi manga fans: Heart of Thomas is NOT sexually explicit, content-wise. It is a very emotional tale of a young man’s unrequited love for his classmate, and the repercussions that he leaves in his wake after he dies (an accident? suicide?). This is felt most profoundly by his classmate Juli, who tries to understand why Thomas did what he did, and why he feels so uneasy when another student who resembles Thomas arrives at the boarding school.

The other nominees in this category were pretty much all-killer, no-filler, so if you love manga, you kind of owe it to yourself to give these other nominees a look-see.

• The Mysterious Underground Men by Osamu Tezuka (PictureBox) – an early work by the master of manga
• Showa: History of Japan 1926-39 by Shigeru Mizuki (Drawn & Quarterly) – a gripping look at Imperial Japan as it marched to war, told by a manga artist who lived it first hand, fought, and lived to tell the tale.
• Utsubora: Tale of a Novelist by Asumiko Nakamura (Vertical) – A novelist meets a mysterious young female writer, and succumbs to the temptation to claim her work as his own — only to suffer the consequences later.
• Summit of the Gods, vol. 4 by Yumemakura Baku & Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare Ponent Mon) – The fourth volume of a five-volume series set against the majesty of Mount Everest, and the mystery behind a camera thought to belong to Sir Edmund Mallory, an explorer who was claimed by the snowy, treacherous climb to the top of this legendary peak.

Best Adaptation from Another Medium: The Strange Tale of Panorama Island by Suehiro Maruo (Last Gasp)
Yet another lush, done-in-one hardcover graphic novel, and the sole manga nominee in this category. So why did it earn a spot in this category? Essentially, this is an adaptation of a short horror novela by Edogawa Rampo, an author who is essentially like the Edgar Allen Poe of Japan (his pen name is a play on “Edgar Allen Poe”).

But leave it to ero-guro (erotic/grotesque) manga creator Suehiro Maruo to take a tale that sounds very similar to The Talented Mr. Ripley (A man takes the identity of a deceased rich man), and serve up a graphic novel that’s elegant, erotic, and horrifying, often all at the same time. The protagonist is a failed author who finds that he can take advantage of his resemblance to a rich, recently deceased classmate to claim his classmate’s fortune, his wife, and his life — and use them all to create a island of unparalleled decadence, designed solely for his pleasure.

Beautifully drawn and often pretty darn creepy, The Strange Tale of Panorama Island is actually relatively mild fare for Maruo compared to some of his earlier works. But it’s still got plenty of wow-worthy (and some NSFW) moments to make it strictly for grown-ups.

 

Best Comics-Related Book: Love & Rockets Companion, edited by Marc Sobel & Kristy Valenti (Fantagraphics)
Well, it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez. So it’s kind of a no-brainer that my vote in this category went to this lovingly assembled collection of essays and art celebrating 30 years of the influential comics series that introduced many comics readers to the worlds of Hoppers and Palomar, told from a very specifically Latino/SoCal point of view. Still! 30 years!? I feel old.

Now, as for the rest of the Eisner Award nominees — well, you can see the rest of ’em for yourself! I only opted to spotlight the ones I personally read and enjoyed, and wanted you to know about.

Even if you’re not an eligible Eisner voter, or if you are, but have already cast your vote — well, that’s OK too! I hope you’ll check out some of these books, because I think they’re definitely worth a look.

Did you vote in the Eisner Awards? If so, what are your picks? Which books are you rooting for? Add your comments below!