Eisner Award Winners 2016

By John Freeman on July 24, 2016

San Diego Comic Con saw the announcement of this year’s Eisner Award winners – and it was good news for Britain’s Sean Phillips, artist on The Fade Out, who co-won the award for Best Limited Series which is written by Ed Brubaker, earning him plenty of deserved kudos on Twitter; publisher SelfMadeHero for their edition of Ruins by Peter Kuper; and London’s brilliant Orbital Comics, which won the award for Spirit of Comics Retailer.

A deluxe edition of The Fade Out will be released in October by Image Comics, collecting all 12 issues and including behind-the-scenes art and stories, sketches and layouts, illustrations, and several historical essays.

The Winners

Best New Series: Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
Best Limited Series: The Fade Out, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Best Continuing Series: Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron and Jason LaTour
Best Reality-Based Work: March: Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell
Best Graphic Album — Reprint: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Best Graphic Album — New: Ruins by Peter Kuper
Best Short Story: “Killing and Dying,” by Adrian Tomine in Optic Nerve #14
Best Single Issue/One-Shot: Silver Surfer #11: “Never After” by Dan Slott and Michael Allred
Best Anthology: Drawn & Quarterly, Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary, Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels edited by Tom Devlin
Best Digital/Webcomic: Bandette by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover
Best Publication Design: Sandman Gallery Edition, designed by Josh Beatman
Best Lettering: Derf Backderf (Trashed)
Best Colouring: Jordie Bellaire (The Autumnlands, Injection, Plutona, Pretty Deadly, The Surface, They’re Not Like Us, Zero, The X-Files, The Massive, Magneto, Vision)
Best Penciller: Cliff Chiang (Paper Girls)
Best Painter/Multimedia Artist: Dustin Nguyen (Descender)
Best Writer: Jason Aaron (Southern Bastards, Men of Wrath, Doctor Strange, Star Wars, Thor)
Best Writer/Artist: Bill Griffith (Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist)
Best Cover Artist: David Aja
The Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award: Dan Mora
Bill Finger Award for Comic Book Writing: Elliot Maggin
Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism: Hogan’s Alley, edited by Tom Heintjes
Best Comics-Related Book: Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America by Bill Schelly
Best Academic/Scholarly Work: The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art, edited by Frances Gateward and John Jennings
Best US Edition of International Material: The Realist by Asaf Hanuka
Best US Edition of International Material — Asia: Showa, 1953–1989: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki
Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Two Brothers by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award: Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal
Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 8): Little Robot by Ben Hatke
Best Publication for Kids (ages 9-12): Over the Garden Wall by Pat McHale, Amalia Levari, and Jim Campbell
Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17): SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki
Best Archival Collection/Project — Strips: The Eternaut by Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Alberto Breccia and Francisco Solano Lòpez, edited by Gary Groth and Kristy Valenti
Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books: Walt Kelly’s Fairy Tales edited by Craig Yoe
Best Humour Publication: Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection! by Kate Beaton
The Spirit of Comics Retailer Award: Orbital Comics

Congratulations to all the winners!

What a night! We won … we actually won! @OrbitalComics has the Eisner Spirit of Comics Retail for 2016. So proud! pic.twitter.com/Itn7OBukOb

— Chris Thompson (@PopCultureHound) July 23, 2016

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.