Eisners Reward Creative Vision

This year's Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards point toward a future for comics that emphasizes individual creative visions. (Double disclaimer: the writer of this piece helped make up the Eisner ballots and PW's Calvin Reid presented the graphic novel awards.) No licensed properties won any awards this year, other than Les Daniels's Wonder Woman: The Complete History (for Best Comics-Related Book). And most of the winners were as idiosyncratic as the medium gets: the Best Writer/Artist award went to Eric Shanower, whose Age of Bronze (Image) is a scrupulously researched serial about the Trojan War and Best Graphic Album—New went to Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde (Fantagraphics), his documentary about life during wartime in the former Yugoslavia. The biggest winners were Chris Ware, whose Jimmy Corrigan (Pantheon) swept three categories, and writer Alan Moore, who won three awards in absentia for his America's Best Comics line. Tony Millionaire (Sock Monkey, soon to be an illustrated prose novel from Dark Horse), P. Craig Russell's opera comics (The Ring of the Nibelung) and Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother) each won two. Even Will Eisner himself picked up an Eisner Award (Best Archival Collection) for DC's The Spirit Archives.