© Hayao Miyazaki, Tokuma Shoten, First Second Books
The 2023 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards revealed its winners at the Comic Con International San Diego event on Friday. Hayao Miyazaki‘s Shuna’s Journey (translated by Alex Dudok de Wit) won this year’s Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia award. First Second / Macmillan published the book.
The manga competed against the following other works in the category:
- Junji Ito‘s Black Paradox (translated by Jocelyne Allen)
- Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s Look Back (translated by Amanda Haley)
- Masaaki Nakayama‘s PTSD Radio (translated by Adam Hirsch)
- Murasaki Yamada‘s Talk to My Back (translation by Ryan Holmberg)
The awards also nominated Junji Ito for the Best Writer/Artist category, but Kate Beaton won for Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands from Drawn & Quarterly.
The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions — which includes the chapters “XX, XY, and XXY: Genderqueer Bodies in Hagio Moto’s Science Fiction Manga” by Keiko Miyajima, “An Exploration of the Birth of the Slave through Ero-Pedagogy in Tagame Gengoroh’s PRIDE” by William S. Armour, and “Gay Fanzines as Contact Zones: Dokkun’s Adventures with ‘Bara’ Manga in between Japan and France” by Edmond (Edo) Ernest Dit Alban — received a nomination in the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category, and won that category. Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren edited the work, and University Press of Mississippi published the work.
Late manga creator Keiji Nakazawa (Barefoot Gen) was nominated for Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame this year, but was not inducted. Nakazawa was previously nominated for the Hall of Fame in 2020, but was similarly not inducted. The four people who were inducted this year out of the 16 who were nominated include: Brian Bolland, Ann Nocenti, Tim Sale, and Diana Schutz.
Winners who were inducted automatically this year without votes include: Jerry Bails, Tony DeZuniga, Justin Green, Jay Jackson, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Aline Kaminsky-Crimb, Win Mortimer, Diane Noomin, Gaspar Saladino, Kim Thompson, Mort Walker, Bill Griffith, Jack Katz, Garry Trudeau, and Tatjana Wood.
Junji Ito‘s Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection manga (translated by Jocelyne Allen) won last year’s Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia award. Eike Exner’s Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History also won last year’s award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work.
Sources: Heidi MacDonald, Bleeding Cool (Rich Johnston)
