Hey, Kiddo, Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s bestselling graphic memoir about familial dysfunction, won Book of the Year, while Fun Home author Alison Bechdel and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola were inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Harvey Awards ceremony held Friday evening during New York Comic Con 2019.
The other Harvey Awards for books were awarded to Ngozi Ukazu’s webcomic/graphic novel series Check, Please!, which won the prize for Digital Book of the Year; Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, which won the Harvey for Best Young Adult Book; Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia, which won Best Manga, and Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel’s Waves, which was awarded the Harvey prize for Best European Book.
In addition to the induction of Bechdel and Mignola, who were in attendance and presented to the audience by designer/editor Chip Kidd and Dark Horse president Mike Richardson respectively, five former Mad magazine editors and cartoonists were also inducted into the Harvey Hall of Fame posthumously. Those inductees were presented to the audience by former DC president and publisher Paul Levitz and include cartoonists Will Elder, Jack Davis, John Severin, and Marie Severin, along with letterer Ben Oda.
Maggie Thompson, a pioneering pop culture fan, longtime editor of the Comics Buyers Guide, and a fixture at the Eisner Awards Ceremony, was presented the Harvey’s Comics Industry Pioneer Award. She was presented to the enthusiastic audience by Heidi MacDonald, editor in chief of The Beat and cohost of PW’s More to Come comics podcast.
This year’s Harvey Awards were presented in front of a capacity audience in the Hudson Mercantile event space near the Javits Convention Center. Relaunched at last year’s New York Comic Con, the Harvey Awards are named after the legendary comics editor and cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman and they are presented annually to the best comics and graphic novels published in the previous year.
