We’re back to our regular Monday afternoon schedule! We’ll still be prioritizing news related to the ongoing fight against police brutality and racial injustice, but this week, we’re focusing that critical lens on news in comics world.
This past weekend would have been the biggest event in U.S. comics: San Diego Comic Con. Instead of an in-person convention, SDCC hosted a huge variety of online events and panels virtually, including the 2020 Eisner Awards. (Check out the full list of 2020 Eisner Award winners on their website.)
This year’s Eisners were sadly tarnished by a shocking mismanagement of the voter process: as reported in The Hollywood Reporter, the Eisner voting website exposed voters’ information and even made votes vulnerable to being changed by other users. BIPOC in the comics community, who discovered the problem, felt particularly vulnerable to abuse, considering that their personal information could be exposed to bad actors as the seemingly never-ending Comicsgate campaign continues to rage on in the Year of Our Satanic Lord 2020.
There were nonetheless some wonderful victories to highlight and celebrate: Ebony Flowers was the first Black woman to win an Eisner in the Best Short Story category for Hot Comb; Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell won three awards for Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (Best Publication for Teens, Best Writer, Best Penciller/Inker), and Bitter Root by David Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene won in the Best Continuing Series category. In the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category, we were delighted to see Qiana Whitted win for her work, “EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest.” (Wanna read it? Try your local library for free JSTOR access.) Wendy Browne, publisher of POME fave Women Write About Comics, wrote poignantly about WWAC’s much-deserved (and, in our opinion, long overdue) Eisner win, and the complicated decision to accept the award.
In the wake of this especially screwed-up Eisner season, we want to encourage our POMEs to celebrate and support BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized creators in our community! Here are a handful of opportunities:
- Throw money at the Kickstarter for MAÑANA: Latinx Comics from the 25th Century! Not only does this incredible anthology feature multiple POME contributors, it is also being published by POME fave Joamette Gil of Power & Magic Press — who happened to be a key figure in breaking the story about the insecurity of the Eisner voting website.
- Check out this wonderful review of What We Don’t Talk About, a graphic novel by Charlot Kristensen about the pain of navigating racism in the context of an interracial relationship, coming out on September 9 from Avery Hill Publishing.
- Read Pretty Brown and Nerdy’s Jazmine Dudley on Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and what the millenial-classic shoujo manga has to teach us about adulthood.
You can also check out a frankly overwhelming slate of panels at the Comic Con at Home program schedule here. Here were some of our favorites (in no particular order):
- Howard Cruse: The Godfather of Queer Comics
- Reclaiming Indigenous History and Culture Through Comics
- Building Your Own Themyscira: Connecting With Other Geeky Bosses
- Women of Color in Comics: Race, Gender, and the Comic Book Medium
- Latinx & Native American Storytellers
- How to (Still) Be a Nerd for Living
