Billy Bat Manga Wins Harvey Award

The Harvey Awards, which honor outstanding work in comics and sequential art, announced the winners for this year’s awards on Friday at New York Comic Con. Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki‘s Billy Bat manga, released by Abrams ComicArts‘ Kana imprint, won the award for Best Manga. Kristi Iwashiro translates the manga.

The other nominees in the category included:

• He Rolled Me Up Like a Grilled Squid by Yoshiharu Tsuge (Drawn & Quarterly, translated by Ryan Holmberg)
• Land by Kazumi Yamashita (Yen Press, translated by Kevin Gifford)
• Miss Ruki by Fumiko Takano (New York Review Comics, translated by Alexa Frank)
• My Gorilla Family by Ichiro Iijima (Living the Line, translated by Ryan Holmberg)
• My Life in 24 Frames per Second by Rintarō (Kana/Abrams ComicArts, translated by Montana Kane)

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle – Akaza Sairai, My Hero Academia — Final Season, the One Piece: Into the Grand Line live-action season, and the Korean animated film Your Letter were nominated for Best Adaptation from Comic Book/Graphic Novel category. However, Spider-Noir won the award.

Kamome Shirahama‘s Witch Hat Atelier won the Best Manga award last year.

The Harvey Awards added the Best Manga category in 2018. Kabi Nagata‘s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness manga won the first award in this category. Kōhei Horikoshi‘s My Hero Academia won the award in 2019, and Kamome Shirahama‘s Witch Hat Atelier won the award in 2020. Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s Chainsaw Man won the award in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Ryōko Kui‘s Delicious in Dungeon won the award in 2024.

In previous years, manga were nominated alongside other comics in the “Best American Edition of Foreign Material” category. The last manga to win the category was Hajime Isayama‘s Attack on Titan in 2014. One-Punch Man and Showa: A History of Japan (1953-1989) were nominated in 2016 but did not win. “Best American Edition of Foreign Material” is no longer a category.

Unlike the Eisner Awards and other awards in the North American comic book industry, the Harvey Awards are nominated and selected by the comic book professionals themselves.

Source: Harvey Awards’ X/Twitter account