Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters (Fantagraphics), an epic, gorgeously illustrated work of horror, social trauma, and violence, was named Best New Graphic Novel during the 2022 Will Eisner Comic Awards ceremony, presented as an in-person event for the first time in three years at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, held July 21-24.
In addition to Windsor-Smith (who won two additional Eisner awards), the late Rep. John Lewis and his creative team of Andrew Aydin, L. Fury, and Nate Powell, won Eisner awards for Best Graphic Memoir for Run: Book One (Abrams ComicArts), a continuation of Lewis’s memoir of his life in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s; and David Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s The Black Panther Party: A Graphic History (Ten Speed Press), won the Eisner for Best Nonfiction work. In a tie, David Walker (Bitter Root, with Chuck Brown and Sanford Greene) and James Tynion, (Something Is Killing the Children, with Werther Dell’Edera) were awarded Eisners for Best Continuing Series.
Eisner awards for the Best Children’s and YA graphic works were awarded to Julie and Stan Sakai for Chibi Usagi: Attack of the Heebie Chibis (IDW), Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock for Salt Magic (Holiday House), and Shing Yin Khor for The Legend of Auntie Po (Kokila).
A complete list of the 2022 Eisner Award winners is available on the Comic-Con website.
Other book-related Eisner winners include The Shadow of a Man (IDW) by Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten for Best U.S. Edition of International Material; and Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection (Viz) by Junji Ito, for Best U.S. Edition of International Material Asia. Comics critic Douglas Wolk won an Eisner for All of the Marvels (Penguin) for Best Comics-Related Book; Eike Exner’s Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History (Rutgers) won the Eisner for the Best Academic/Scholarly Work; and Rachel Smythe’s mobile webtoon version of Lore Olympus (which is also now a bestselling print work) won the Eisner for Best Webcomic.
The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award, which honors those in comics working to help others, was presented to Koyama Press publisher Annie Koyama and her Koyama Press Provides program. The Spirit of Comics Retailer Award was presented to owner Katie Pryde and the staff of Books with Pictures: Comics for Everyone in Portland, Oregon. In addition the Eisner Awards judges voted to induct six new members into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, and they are Howard Chaykin (American Flagg), Kevin Eastman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Larry Hama (G.I. Joe), shojo manga pioneer Moto Hagio, David Mazzucchelli (City of Glass), and Grant Morrison (Animal Man).
