Six decades ago, Congress was weighing whether comics were fostering delinquency among America’s young. Last Friday night, on the opposite coast, a sitting congressman was honored for his creative commitment to educating through comics.
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was a cartoon-reading teenager when the Comics Code Authority began issuing its protective stamp of approval in 1954, achieved a unique milestone at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, becoming the first sitting politician to win an Eisner Award.
March: Book Two, last year’s installment in Lewis’s graphic memoir of the civil rights movement, was voted Best Reality-Based Work by comics pros at the 2016 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, which are widely considered to be “the Oscars of comics.”
“I am delighted and overjoyed that the story of March is so pleasing to so many people all over America,” Lewis said in an interview. “This is a great honor to receive an Eisner with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” said Aydin, Lewis’s staff aide and co-author of the March trilogy, noting that he — like the congressman — grew up reading comics. “For the comics community to honor us this way means they believe we did justice to the story of John Lewis, his friends and colleagues in the movement, and the sacrifices of so many. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who worked to help us make these books and get them out into the world.”
Powell, himself a prior Eisner winner for 2008’s Swallow Me Whole, has illustrated the entire trilogy.
“I’m so moved to have this massive, unlikely project embraced and recognized so by the comics realm and by my comics-making peers,” Powell said. “Our medium houses one of the most inclusive and supportive communities I’ve ever known — full of people focused on pushing ideas, on presenting visions of the world as it might be, and it’s inspiring every day to create work alongside them.”
The best-selling March series (Top Shelf/IDW) has previously received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book; and has been added to the reading programs of many American school systems and universities. March: Book Three will be published Tuesday.
Lewis — who in 2011 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom — was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington. He has said that reading the mid-’50s comic book, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story helped spark his interest in the civil rights movement and put him on a lifelong path of nonviolent activism. (The Eisners also continue to reward the growing body of scholarship about black comics, as Rutgers’s The Blacker the Ink was honored.)
The congressman said that Aydin’s announcement more than five years ago that he was heading to San Diego’s Comic-Con — which prompted some “geek” teasing among office staffers, but also Lewis’s enlightened admonishment and sharing of his own personal history with comics — helped lead to the creation of March. So in one aspect, last Friday’s Eisner Award represents coming full circle.
March was also Eisner-nominated for Best Publication for Teens — a category that was won by Jillian Tamaki’s SuperMutant Magic Academy.
Tamaki’s win was part of a banner night for the publisher Drawn & Quarterly, which also won in the Best Short Story category, for Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying; for Humor Publication, for Kate Beaton’s Step Aside, Pops!; for Best U.S. Edition of International Material from Asia, for Shigeru Mizuki’s latest in the Showa history of Japan; and for the publisher’s own remarkable silver-anniversary anthology.
Image had a big night as well, with seven awards for its creators, including colorist extraordinaire Jordie Bellaire (whose winning portfolio also included the publishers IDW, Dark Horse and Marvel); Dustin Nguyen, who won for his art on Descender; writer Jason Aaron (Southern Bastards with Jason Latour, plus Marvel and Marvel Icon titles); Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser (The Fade Out); and penciler/inker Cliff Chiang, whose Paper Girls (with Brian K. Vaughan) also won Best New Series.
“I’ve never won anything in comics before, so I wasn’t prepared for what an altogether humbling experience it is,” Chiang said. “Thanks to everyone for reading and supporting us and our fellow nominees. Their stellar work is what makes this an honor, and I honestly feel that the future of comics has never been brighter.”
BOOM! Studios, IDW and Fantagraphics also picked up multiple trophies, and Marvel talents (including cover artist David Aja) took home multiple honors.
The Fantagraphics wins included the Best Writer/Artist trophy for Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith, who won for the graphic novel Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair With a Famous Cartoonist.
“I am having fun! Didn’t know about the award until 11 this morning,” Griffith said, noting that he was “grateful to all the voters and the judges for my first Eisner.”
“Invisible Ink was, indeed, a labor of love; [it’s] nice to know others love it, as well.”