At the end of April, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards announced its 2015 nominees, and publishers began planning reprints with gold-foiled, “E”-emblazoned stickers and awaiting the July 10 awards gala at Comic-Con. But I suspect my fellow comics omnivores most appreciate awards outfits like the Eisners not for the winners but for the lists of nominees. “Tell me what else to love!!!” I’d never know which ponderous and exorbitantly-priced archival collections to pine for longingly if not for that fabulous category… or I should say, those categories: “Best Archival Collection/Project– Strips” and “Best Archival Collection/Project– Comic Books,” the result of several permutations of the award that reflect the evolution of the genre. (Book lust.)
But for my money, it’s the “Best Reality-Based Work” category that always has the best mix of, “yes! I loved that book!” and, “wow! I’ve never heard of that book!” That sweet spot of self-congratulatory taste confirmation and wallet-plying exposure. Perhaps this effect is because of the diversity of books usually populating the category. The common attribute of being reality-based doesn’t necessarily dictate which audiences the books target, so one finds a broad cross section of comics tastes, only excluding works strictly confined to the sci-fi, speculative, or the superhero varieties…and in the case of one of this year’s nominees, superheroism is no small part of the protagonist’s reality!
The breadth of 2015’s nominees is further proof that comics truth is rangier than fiction. Taken together, this group of reality-based comics is a philosopher’s toychest on the nature of “reality” as it’s interpreted by comics. I don’t envy the Eisner judges who have to pick a winner from among them, but I have read all six, and this week we present a set of reviews and reactions to each of them that center on the questions: What does it mean for comics to be based in “reality?” What are ways that the form illuminates personal and historical truth, as exemplified by these six books?
On the autobiographical end of the spectrum,
Roz Chast (famously New Yorker) contends with her parents and end-of-life in Bloomsbury’s “Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant,”
MariNaomi collects vignettes of the visual poetry like only comics can do in “Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories” (2d Cloud/Uncivilized Books),
and Cece Bell charms children and adults alike with her cartoon-animal-ified account of her childhood friendships in “El Deafo” from Amulet/Abrams.
On the historical side of the ledger,
Ed Piskor’s ongoing “Hip Hop Family Tree” dropped its “Volume 2: 1981-1983” (Doug E. Fresh to Run-DMC) from Fantagraphics,
Nathan Hale’s anachronistically eponymous “Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood” from Abrams rollicked its way through the First World War,
and Soaring Penguin, a UK concern, published an anthology about the same War but with very different voices, edited by Jonathan Clode and John Stuart Clark, entitled “To End All Wars: The Graphic Anthology of the First World War.”
As we post reviews of each book this week, we will link here to each review, as well as a wrap-up piece on Friday with concluding thoughts about how comics uniquely and profoundly conveys and reconstructs reality.
