Comic-Con International has announced the judging panel for the 2018 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. This committee will select the nominations to appear on the Eisner Awards ballot. This year's judges include Candice Mack, Graeme McMillan, Tate Ottati, Nhora Lucía Serrano, Alex Simmons, and Bill Wilson.
Candice Mack is the manager of systemwide Young Adult Services at the Los Angeles Public Library where she helps coordinate teen programs and collections. She was the president of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) in 2015-2016 and served as the chair of YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee in 2010-2011. She has reviewed graphic novels and young adult literature for the American Library Association’s Booklist journal since 2011. More recently, Mack has worked with Comic-Con International and San Diego Public Library to help moderate, present and organize panels for the Comic Conference for Educators and Librarians.
Graeme McMillan writes about comic books and pop culture for The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, and Playboy. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Time, io9, Comics Alliance, CBR.com, and Newsarama, among other outlets. He’s also half of the comic book podcast Wait, What?. After graduating from Grays School of Art in Aberdeen, Scotland, with an MA in art and design, he worked as a teacher, graphic designer, and call center manager before finding his niche in journalism.
Tate Ottati opened his first comics store in Lauderhill, Florida, at the age of 17. Today Ottati and his family operate an over 10,000-square-foot comic shop, a separate 2,000-square-foot tabletop gaming shop, an art gallery and boutique, and a second comic shop. Hosting multiple annual events every year and offering a diverse selection of products has made his business something special to the community and brought him the 2009 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award.
Nhora Lucía Serrano is a visiting assistant professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. Originally from Colombia, she has always been passionate about the interplay between image and word in newspaper strips, editorial cartoons, and the book arts in the Anglophone world and Latin America. Serrano is treasurer of the Comics Studies Society and serves on the MLA Executive Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives. Serrano is also the recent recipient of a Special Collections fellowship at Hamilton, where she is studying the George Cruikshank collection as well as Gus Arriola’s Gordo. An author of several visual studies articles and encyclopedia entries, Serrano’s edited anthology Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis (Routledge) will be published in 2018.
Alex Simmons is an award-winning freelance writer, comic book creator, and playwright, as well as an international teaching artist, guest speaker, and educational consultant. He’s written Batman, Scooby Doo, Archie, Tarzan, and more, as well as his own original series, Blackjack. For years Simmons has taught writing and arts education master classes and workshops to students, children, and educators in the U.S., Europe, West Indies, and Africa.
Bill Wilson has been attending Comic-Con since 1971. After being an attendee for many years, he became a member of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, which showed Japanese animation to audiences at the 1980 Comic-Con. He eventually became president of the Los Angeles chapter. In 1985 and 1986 Bill put together evening anime programs at the Con, and he worked with Japanese businesses to sell at Comic-Con and introduced American distributors to the imports. In 1985 he was chair of the second Comic Book Expo, Comic-Con’s industry trade show. After that he worked in the Registration department for several years, and In 1991 he organized one of the first LGBT events held during Comic-Con. For the last few years he has been in charge of the Eisner Awards nominee display in the Art Show.
The judges will meet in San Diego in April to select the nominees that will be placed on the Eisner Awards ballot. The nominees will then be voted on by professionals in the comic book industry, and the results will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on July 20 at Comic-Con in San Diego.
Guidelines for submitting material for the judges will be announced on the Comic-Con website in early January. The deadline for submitting nominations is March 16.
More information about the Eisner Awards can be found at comic-con.org/awards.
