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Manga Listed Among Eisner Award Nominees for 2008

The 2008 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards panel of judges has announced its nominees for the best works in the comic book industry. Japanese manga titles garnered two Short Story nominations and one nomination each for Continuing Series, Publication for Kids, Archival Collection–Comic Books, Writer/Artist, and Penciller/Inker categories. Two reference books about manga have also been nominated. Comic Con International will host the awards ceremony on July 25 in San Diego.

Yūichi Yokoyama's "Book" short story (published in New Engineering from PictureBox and pictured at right) and Fumiyo Kouno's "Town of Evening Calm" (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms from Last Gasp) are competing with four other titles for Best Short Story. In the Best Continuing Series, Naoki Urasawa's Monster medical suspense manga (Viz Media, pictured at left) is vying with Dark Horse's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 (as co-written by franchise creator Joss Whedon) and other acclaimed American titles. Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! was nominated in the Best Publication for Kids category. Vertical earns a Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books nod for its release of Apollo's Song by manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka.

Prolific creator Fumi Yoshinaga is among the Best Writer/Artist nominees for her work on Flower of Life (pictured at right) and The Moon and the Sandals. Takeshi Obata's art on Death Note (Viz Media) earns him a Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team nod. Two books — Jason Thompson's Manga: The Complete Guide (Del Rey Manga) and Robin Brenner's Understanding Manga and Anime (Libraries Unlimited/Greenwood Publishing) — are up for the Best Comics-Related Book award.

Finally, six manga titles are competing in the recently added Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan category, including three of the nominees for other awards: Jiro Taniguchi's The Ice Wanderer and Other Stories (Fanfare / Ponent Mon), Tezuka's MW (Vertical), Urasawa's Monster, Yokoyama's New Engineering, Taiyo Matsumoto's Tekkonkinkreet: Black & White (Viz Media), and Kouno's Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (pictured at left).

Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi's Old Boy won the first ever award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Japan in 2007. It was the only manga title to win an award last year, even though that year boasted the most manga nominations in the awards' 20-year-old history (until this year).

Source: Publishers Weekly's The Beat