Outstanding Artist: Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, who previously won three awards last year for “Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me.”
Outstanding Anthology: “Be Gay, Do Comics,” an anthology about LGBTQIA experiences from the editors of The Nib, and published by IDW.
Outstanding Collection: “GLEEM,” a selection of short stories by writer/artist Freddy Carrasco. The book previously won this year’s Doug Wright Pigskin Peters Award.
Outstanding Comic: “Cry Wolf Girl,” a fantasy comic by Ariel Ries. The synopsis says, “There was once a girl named Dawa. Having lost her family to sickness, she found herself with an emptiness inside that she did not know how to fill. Alas, in all her endeavours, nothing she tried ever left her feeling so full as the art – of trickery.”
Outstanding Online Comic: “Witchy” by Ariel Ries, her second win of the evening. The webcomic, which was put into print by Lion Forge/Oni Press, follows a young witch who is conscripted into the Witch Guard, the very group who executed her father.
Outstanding Graphic Novel: “Hot Comb,” a coming-of-age memoir by Ebony Flowers. Flowers was named last year’s Promising New Talent, and was consequently given the honor of drawing this year’s artwork of Ignatz the mouse.
Outstanding Minicomic: “Black Hole Heart” by Cathy G. Johnson, which is “a horror story of female friendship for readers teen + older.”
Outstanding Series: “Fizzle” by Whit Taylor. Published by Radiator Comics, the series follows Claire, a New Jersey transplant working at a tea shop in California, who wants something more from life.
Outstanding Story: “The Hard Tomorrow” by Eleanor Davis, a graphic novel about a couple struggling to conceive a child. The book also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel/Comics this year.
Promising New Talent: Theo Stultz, a cartoonist and illustrator based in Minneapolis. A recent graduate of a BFA in drawing at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Stultz’s work has been published by Lucky Pocket Press, and he is also trained in character design and storyboarding.
You can read the full list of this year’s nominees here, and watch the presentation below:
