A monstrous affair

IT was a monstrous affair at the recent 2018 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, or Eisner Awards, with Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Image Comics series Monstress and Emil Ferris’ critically acclaimed graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters the biggest winners at the awards ceremony held at the San Diego ComicCon, United States last Friday.

The creator-owned Monstress won five awards in total: Best Continuing Series, Best Publication For Teens and Best Writer for Liu (who shared the award with Batman writer Tom King), while Takeda won for Best Cover Artist and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist.

Ferris’ debut graphic novel My Favourite Thing Is Monsters, published by Fantagraphics, is about a young girl who tries to solve the murder of a neighbour, a Holocaust survivor, and draws on Ferris’ love for monsters and classic horror culture. The book won Ferris three Eisners in total: Best Writer/Artist, Best Colouring, and Best Graphic Album, New.

Malaysian comics artist Remeina Yee’s webcomic turned graphic novel, The Carpet Merchant Of Konstantiniyya ,was nominated for Best Digital Comic, but lost out to Marley’s Ghost by Harvey Kurtzman, Josh O’Neill, Shannon Wheeler and Gideon Kendall.

Despite suffering the ignominy of being cancelled after only six issues, Marvel Comics’ Black Panther: World Of Wakanda won Best Limited Series, while another Marvel series, Black Bolt won Best New Series.

Hellboy: Krampusnacht ,by industry heavyweights Mike Mignola and Adam Hughes, won Best Single Issue/One-Shot. —