Cartoonist Jamar Nicholas will give the keynote address at the 2022 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards. The Ringo Awards will be presented during a banquet and ceremony at the Baltimore Comic-Con on October 29.
Nicholas is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator whose career began by self-publishing The Jamar Chronicles #1 in 1998. In the days before Google, Nicholas and friends created the Indy Cred All-Stars, a Yahoo message board for DIYers interested in learning more about comics and cartooning.
His next move was in early webcomics with The Jamar Chronicles Weekly then he created Detective Boogaloo: Hip Hop Cop (which was later turned into a newspaper strip). He worked with Image/Devil’s Due on Radiskull & Devildoll, based on the web cartoon series by Joe Sparks, and illustrated Annie Auerbach’s The Grosse Adventures at Tokyopop.
Nicholas adapted and illustrated Geoffrey Canada’s Fist Stick Knife Gun about escaping inner city violence, for which he won several GLYPH Awards. He created Leon: Protector of the Playground, which won the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity. His latest book, Leon the Extraordinary, releases on October 4, he’s a columnist for DRAW! Magazine, and co-hosts Pencil to Pencil Podcast.
“I am over the moon thrilled to be the 2022 keynote presenter for the Ringo Awards. Mike [Wieringo] meant the world to me – and I know I share that with the comics community – that his loss is still felt,” Nicholas said. “How fitting that my friend, this kind soul who embodied, to me, what a professional comics artist could be, infused joy, wonder and the love of the artform into every project he touched – has us gathering again to celebrate that in this years’ award nominees. I’m honored to be part of the ceremony.”
“Besides being a friend of the show, Jamar was a friend of Mike Wieringo,” Baltimore Comic-Con promoter Marc Nathan said. “Jamar is really having his moment right now with Scholastic backing his Leon character, and beyond all of that, he’s a great friend and proponent of the comics industry. We are very much looking forward to hearing Jamar’s keynote address this year.”
The Ringo Awards will include a cocktail hour (cash bar), dinner with Baltimore crab cake, the awards ceremony, and a gift bag. There are a limited number of tickets available to the public.
