We went back through the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (or Eisners for short) to recommend winners for your collection.
A fine example of the sci-fi and fantasy genres dropping acid and making out at the comic shop, this is the forbidden romance archetype reboot we didn’t know we needed. A masterfully blended tale of young parents in love amidst an epic space war, it’s obvious why Saga netted Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan Eisners for not only Best Artist and Best Writer, but Best Continuing Series as well.
Capturing the heady mix of emotions that you find on a family road trip takes a certain kind of magic. Doing it so the reader smiles at the memories takes another. Raina Telgemeier’s flashback-embellished tale of sisterhood on the road and under pressure has both of those kinds of magic, and the Best Writer/Artist Eisner award to prove it.
A fiercely mythic tale told with a cowtown twang, Pretty Deadly delivers all the hat and twice the horse of most weird Westerns. Taking a well-deserved Eisner for Best Colorist, Jordie Bellaire's powers are on full display here, not only conjuring depth and texture with her color work, but giving us a glimpse at the hidden natures of the characters themselves.
Equal parts history lesson, exposé, and day-in-the life story, Trashed excavates the largely hidden world of our garbage. Awarded an Eisner for his masterful lettering (making even the densest pages a pleasure to read), creator Derf Backderf has produced an opus on the refuse we create, and the invisible heroes who spend their days trying to rescue us from it.
Having won Eisners for both the inside and outside of Hawkeye (Best Artist/Penciler/Inker AND Best Cover Artist), David Aja's design-influenced style manages to communicate action in, through, and even across panels, making it a perfect match for this kind of high intensity story.
With the award-winning art and design (Best Artist, New Graphic Album, and Publication Design) of Ramon K. Perez and Eric Skillman, this fever-dream adaptation of Henson's never-produced screenplay feels less like a thing you finish reading and more like a thing you wake up from.
Estranged children. Worried lovers. A tragic bombing. A body beyond recognition. Exit Wounds is Rutu Modan’s award-winning (Best New Graphic Album) exploration of what it means for a man who vanishes from everyone’s lives to go missing.