Specs Beat Pecs In The 2013 Eisner Award Nominations

This year’s nominations for the Eisner Awards, the comic book industry’s top honours, were announced yesterday, with creator-owned indie and small-press titles making a remarkable showing against Marvel and DC’s largely superhero-driven output. While unlikely to have much a commercial impact, the news can’t have been well-received by the Big Two, both of which have recently revamped their lines in an attempt to translate box office success into print sales.

Walking away with the most nominations as well as the biggest jump from last year (seven nominations to 24) was Fantagraphics, home of the intensely personal work of writer/artists like Lilli Carré (the short story collection Heads or Tails) and Chris Ware (Building Stories).

Those who gave up on comics during the Dark Age of the ‘90s might mostly remember Image Comics for Rob Liefeld’s preoccupation with giant manboobs and his correspondingly bizarre take on the female body, but in the last couple of years the imprint has renewed its commitment to its original brief: to be a home for the kind of creator-owned titles that fall outside the purview of Marvel and DC.

They’ve been rewarded with 17 nominations, the standouts from which include Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ sweetly profane sci-fi/fantasy title Saga, and The Manhattan Projects – a gleefully violent alternate history of the Cold War from Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra.

This turn toward indie domination isn’t actually all that surprising. While the Eisners are often referred to as the comic book industry’s Oscars, they tend to have a notably less populist streak. With DC trying to tempt new readers with its frustratingly angsty, convoluted ‘New 52’ reboot, and Marvel attempting to cash in on its cinematic successes with a hit-and-miss creative reshuffle under the ‘Marvel NOW!’ banner, there hasn’t been a lot of room at the Big Two for the kind of formal innovation that tends to get Eisner judges all verklempt.

The awards will be announced on Friday July 19 at the International Comic-Con in San Diego.

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Rob Newcombe is a freelance pop culture journalist whose work has appeared in Rave Magazine and The Brag.

‘Superman – The Sad Years’ image from Scenic Reflections.