2018 Prism Award Nominees Announced

The Prism Awards return for 2018, this time at San Diego Comic-Con. Debuting in 2017, the Prism Awards, co-coordinated with Prism Comics and the Cartoon Art Museum, are a way to recognize excellent in queer comics. There's so much great queer content in comics right now, and I love that Prism and the Museum have put this together.

Plus, the award is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Just look at this one from last year:

An example of a Prism Award!

I was one of the inaugural judges for the award, and returned again this year, along with Panel Pal Heidi MacDonald of The Beat, and many others (listed below). I can't tell you which category or else Maia will come to my house and steal my copies of Beyond. Sorry!

Here's the lineup of nominees for each category:

The nominees for the 2018 Prism Awards are: 

Short Form Comics: 
To Measure by Noella Whitney, 2017
Contact High by James F Wright and Josh Eckert, August 2017
Figurinha by Dante Luiz, May 2017
There s More Than One! by Justin Hubbell, June 2017
It Was 1973, and Tiffany Banks Was Totally Winning at Gender by Ajuan Mance,

2017 Webcomics: 
Cans of Beans, chapter 9 by Tamara Go, 2017
SuperButch Issue 1 by Becky Hawkins and Barry Deutsch, 2017
Monster Pop! by Maya Kern, (excerpt from 2017)
O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti, (excerpts from 2017)
Superpose by Ciaran and Han, (excerpt from August 2017-November 2017)

Small To Midsize Press Comics and Graphic Novels: 
Steam Clean by Laura Ķeniņš, May 2017
The Boys Who Became Hummingbirds by Daniel Heath Justice and Weshoyot Alvitre, Alternate History Comics Inc., June  2017
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, Fantagraphics, February 2017

Main Stream Comics and Graphic Novels: 
Iceman by Sina Grace (writer), Alessandro Vitti (artist), Kevin Wada (artist), Marvel Comics, 2017 Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin (Writer), Nina Vakueva (Pencils), Irene Flores (Inker), Rebecca Nalty (Colorist), Jim Campbell  (Letterer) Boom Studios, 2017
The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag, Scholastic Graphix, 2017

Anthologies:
Dates: An Anthology of Queer Historical Fiction Volume 2 edited by Zora Gilbert and Cat Parra, August 2017
Power & Magic: IMMORTAL SOULS edited by Joamette Gil, 2017
Oh Joy Sex Toy, Volume 4 edited by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan, 2017

And here's the judges, including myself:

AJ Real (Advanced Death Saves edited by Josh Trujillo)
Ajuan Mance (Gender Studies; Alphabet; We’re Still Here
Brian Andersen (Stripling Warrior; So Super Duper; The Advocate
e jackson (Flux; Drawing a Dialogue podcast)
Gillian Pascasio (The Kiss of the Demoness)
Gina Biggs (Love Not Found)
Hari Conner (Finding(Home)
Heidi MacDonald (The Beat, The News Blog of Comics Culture)
H-P Lehkonen (Life Outside the Circle
Jack Baur (Librarian, Berkeley Public Library)
Mey Valdivia Rude (Autostraddle)
Rob McMonigal (Panel Patter)
Scout Tran-Caffee (Villainette; Falling Sky)
Sfé R. Monster (Beyond: The Queer Sci Fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology, Vols. 1 and 2; webcomic Eths’ Skin)
William O. Tyler (WoT, Cinephilia)

The awards themselves will be held at San Diego Comic Con on Saturday, July 21st at 8pm in room 29AB. You must have a membership to attend, which is a bummer, but understandable.

Good luck to all the nominees and on behalf of my fellow judges, let me just say--there's some really amazing work being done in queer comics right now. I'm sure most Panel Patter readers are already doing so, but if you haven't started reading comics with queer themes, there's no better time than now.