January 3, 2018

Pages from Libby’s Dad by Eleanor Davis, winner of 2017 Best Print Comic

The Cartoonist Studio Prize is back for it’s sixth year. Two creators, one each for print and online, are selected each year and receive $1,000. Every year, the judges are Slate’s Jacob Brogan, a CCS representative (this year, Kevin Czap), and a guest judge (this year, Andrew Farago from San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum). Submissions are currently open an any English comic published in 2017 is eligible, so submit before the deadline, January 31, 2018.

Previous years have included an impressive breadth of print comics. Here are the past winners of Best Print Comic and some of the intense competition.

In 2017, Best Print Comic went to Eleanor Davis for Libby’s Dad (Retrofit and Big Planet Comics), a potent meditation on the complexities of childhood. She was up against an intense group, including Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden (Drawn and Quarterly), Rosalie Lightning by Tom Hart (St. Martin’s Press), and The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew (Pantheon).

2016 Best Print Comic went to Carol Tyler for her momentous Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father (Fantagraphics), a collection of Tyler’s three mournful, angry, beautiful memoirs about her dad’s experiences on the European front in World War 2 PTSD. Her competition included Curveball by Jeremy Sorese (Nobrow), The Oven by Sophie Goldstein (AdHouse), and SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki (Drawn and Quarterly).

The 2015 Best Print Comic went to Richard McGuire for Here (Pantheon), a decades-in-the-making, centuries-spanning epic of time and space, as seen through the complete history of a single room in a single house. It held its own against the likes of Beautiful Darkness by Kerascoët (Drawn and Quarterly), How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis (Fantagraphics), and This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki (First Second).

2014 Best Print Comic went to Taiyo Matsumoto for the stunning Sunny Vol. 1 and Sunny Vol. 2 (VIZ Media), two beautifully drawn and uniquely skewed manga about life inside a Japanese orphanage. Yet it, too, was up against a tough crowd with the likes of Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang (First Second) and Julio’s Day by Gilbert Hernández (Fantagraphics).

Finally, the 2013 Best Print Comic went to Chris Ware for  Building Stories, an epic made up of 14 books, pamphlets, and broadsheets. And still, even in the very first year, the competition was fierce, including competitors such as Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré(Fantagraphics), Blacksad: A Silent Hell by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido(Dark Horse), King City by Brandon Graham (Image Comics), and The Infinite Wait and Other Stories by Julia Wertz(Koyama Press).

Post by Angela Boyle ′16.