Fanbase Press’ coverage of the 2019 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards continues with the “Countdown to the Eisners” series. From Wednesday, May 29, through Wednesday, July 10, 2019, Fanbase Press will highlight each of the Eisner Awards’ 31 nomination categories, providing comic book industry members and readers alike the opportunity to learn more about the nominees and their work. Stay tuned for Fanbase Press’ continued coverage of the Eisner Awards, including live coverage of the ceremony at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, July 19.
The Best Academic/Scholarly Work award category is a fairly new Eisner category, first being awarded in 2012. The award is bestowed upon works that perform academic analysis that adds to the canon of understanding comics and the medium. Previous winners of this award include Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics by Frederick Luis Aldama, The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art edited by Frances Gateward and John Jennings, and Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews edited by Sarah Lightman
Here are the 2019 Eisner Award nominees for the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category:
Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future by Aaron Kashtan (Ohio State University Press)
Written by lecturer and professor Aaron Kashtan, Between Pen and Pixel looks to the comics medium as a way to showcase changes in typography and design that are not readily apparent in print literature, especially in the rise of digital platforms to consume texts. For Kashtan, the comics medium is able to inform more readily how the reading experience is being transformed.
Click here to purchase.
Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies by Marc Singer (University of Texas Press)
Breaking the Frames is written by Marc Singer, an associate professor of English at Howard University. In this book, Singer takes a look at the current state of comics epistemology, as the field becomes more popular and yet, at the same time, more fragmented into scholarly camps, and seeks better ways to understand the medium and thus unite its academics.
Click here to purchase.
The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics by Eddie Campbell (Library of American Comics/IDW/Ohio State University Press)
Written by cartoonist Eddie Campbell (who had done illustrations for Alan Moore’s From Hell), The Goat Getters focuses on early 20th century newspaper sports comics, such as those by drawn by Rube Goldberg, George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and Tad Dorgan (Indoor Sports). The Goat Getters is lavishly populated with newspaper sports comics that reinforce Campbell’s thesis that the sports section was the birthplace of comics strips as we know it.
Click here to purchase.
Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics by Lara Saguisag (Rutgers University Press)
Incorrigibles and Innocents is written by children’s book author and English professor Lara Saguisag and focuses on turn-of-the-century, children-centric comics, such as Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland and Rudolph Dirk’s The Katzenjammer Kids. Saguisag recognizes that a critical study of the depiction of childhood during this rapidly modernizing period didn’t exist and aims to fill that gap.
Click here to purchase.
Sweet Little Cunt: The Graphic Work of Julie Doucet by Anne Elizabeth Moore (Uncivilized Books)
Sweet Little Cunt, composed by journalist and comics anthologist Anne Elizabeth Moore, is a deep dive into the work of Canadian underground comics creator Julie Doucet. Author of comics such as Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary, Doucet has become a feminist figurehead with her comics she created through the ’90s and 2000s, and Moore’s text provides a critical overview of her work.
Click here to purchase.
Stay tuned to the Fanbase Press website each day as we continue our “Countdown to the Eisners” coverage! Plus, follow Fanbase Press’ Facebook, Twitter (@Fanbase_Press), and Instagram (@fanbasepress) with the hashtag #FPSDCC to stay up to date on our SDCC and Eisner Awards updates, including a live-tweet of the 2019 Eisner Award Ceremony from the Hilton Bayfront Hotel at San Diego Comic-Con on the evening of Friday, July 19th!
