Drawn to Comics: Lumberjanes, Other DtC Favs, Women and Queer Women Win Big at the Eisners!

by rory midhani

by rory midhani

Last Friday night was really, truly a great night for comics. That night was the night that the 27th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Award winners were announced and the trophies were awarded at a ceremony in San Diego at Comic-con. And so many great comics won! I think this is genuinely the first time I’ve seen the list of winners from a major award and not just been not-disappointed, but been genuinely happy. Let’s have three cheers for women, queer and otherwise, in comics!

https://twitter.com/Gingerhazing/status/619970875320725504

Okay, first we need to talk about the awards that made me happiest, which if you read this website, I don’t think you’ll be at all surprised to find out have to do with Lumberjanes. Lumberjanes is honestly the best, you guys. If you’re not reading it right now, please, I’m begging you, you need to start. It’s fun and funny and exciting and well written and it has great art and really, really great characters and is diverse and unlike anything else in mainstream comics today. Anyway, back to the actual news. The first award that Lumberjanes was up for was Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17), which was also the fist award that they won. Yay! Congratulations to Shannon Watters, Noelle Stevenson, Brooke A. Allen and our very own Grace Ellis!

The book was also nominated in the category Best New Series, which many saw as the most difficult category of the night. They were up against The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Skottie Young’s Rocket Raccoon book from Marvel, and two titles I’ve talked about multiple times here at Drawn to Comics, Ms. Marvel and The Wicked and the Divine. Once again, Lumberjanes took home the prize.

The awards for Drawn to Comics favorites didn’t end there. Emily Carroll also took home two prizes, one (Best Short Story) for her delightfully beautiful and creepy online short “When Darkness Presses” and another (Best Graphic Album — Reprint) for her wonderful book of fables, Through the Woods. Carroll is one of my favorite writers and artists and she definitely deserves any and all awards that she gets. Jillian Tamaki, who I’m constantly praising, along with her cousin Mariko Tamaki, won Best Graphic Album — New for their book This One Summer. Another favorite, Fiona Staples, won Best Penciller/Inker for her art on Saga, which also very, very deservedly won the big award, Best Continuing Series. I was also really happy to see that Raina Telgemeier won for best Writer/Artist for her work on Sisters. I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t read any of her work yet, but have recently bought some to check it out, thanks to Kate Leth’s recommendation.

From "When the Darkness Presses" by Emily Carroll.

From “When the Darkness Presses” by Emily Carroll.

These books winning Eisners isn’t just exciting because I’m a fan of them, or we’re fans of them, it’s important because it’s showing that in a medium where women are so often told that we’re fake fans, or that books by us and about us don’t sell or even just aren’t good, women really came out on top. Not only that, but a lot of books by and for queer women came out on top. So many of the big awards, Best Writer/Artist, Best New Series, both of the Best Graphic Album categories, Best Penciller/Inker and half of Best Continuing Series, all went to women. Basically, women came to the 2015 Eisners and took over. They dominated. They changed the game. When you take a look specifically at the wins for Lumberjanes, though, that’s a really, really big freaking deal. Like, I dunno if you’ve noticed, but that’s a mainstream, best-selling all-ages comic book about a diverse group of girls by a group of women, and all of it’s really, really queer. A book like that never could have existed when I was a kid, and definitely never could have won two awards at the Eisners! That’s where we are today: a comic that would’ve been dismissed as too queer, too girly and too niche to be successful, or even maybe publishable, a few years ago, is now a multiple Eisner winner and is selling like hotcakes. Right on.

This year’s Eisner winners definitely mean something good for comics. It means a more open, welcoming and progressive comics community. It means a world where women and girls might no longer have to defend being fans of the comics that they love. It means a bright and wonderful future. For a complete list of this year’s winners, you can check out Comics Alliance (who also won an award for their comics journalism, congratulations!).

New Releases (July 15)

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake Card Wars #1 (Boom!)

Lumberjanes #16 (Boom!)

Steven Universe Vol. 1 TPB (Boom!)

Batman Harley Quinn TPB (DC)

Black Canary #2 (DC)

Harley Quinn #18 (DC)

Secret Six #4 (DC)

Supergirl Vol. 6 Crucible TPB (DC)

Red Sonja #1973 (Dynamite)

Swords of Sorrow: Vampirella/Jennifer Blood #3 (Dynamite)

Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps #2 (Marvel)

Hawkeye #22 (Marvel)

Siege #1 (Marvel)

Years of Future Past #3 (Marvel)


Welcome to Drawn to Comics! From diary comics to superheroes, from webcomics to graphic novels – this is where we’ll be taking a look at comics by, featuring and for queer ladies. So whether you love to look at detailed personal accounts of other people’s lives, explore new and creative worlds, or you just love to see hot ladies in spandex, we’ve got something for you.

If you have a comic that you’d like to see me review, you can email me at mey [at] autostraddle [dot] com

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Mey

Mey Rude is a fat, trans, Latina lesbian living in LA. She's a writer, journalist, and a trans consultant and sensitivity reader. You can follow her on twitter, or go to her website if you want to hire her.

Mey has written 572 articles for us.

34 Comments

  1. Unfortunately it’s a poor selection of comics for me this week. I’m getting Black Canary #2, Lumberjanes #16 and The Siege #1 (America Chavez returns!).

    I did go back and buy a comic from a couple of week’s ago that everyone’s recommended list missed, The Spire #1. I’d describe is as an urban fantasy similar to the Discworld guard series, but with a lesbian Sam Vimes.

    • I’m getting those same comics! But also I’m picking up Hawkeye #22 (the final issue of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s run) and Secret Six #4, which has one of it’s characters coming out in it!

    • Well, The Spire sounds intriguing. And I am liking Black Canary. But no, not much for me either, although I did finally give Jem and The Holograms a try.

      And congratulations to the Eisner winners.

  2. omg. Lumberjanes best new series! It’s great, but yes, for it to win with what they were up against is H-U-G-E !!! Wowee! Congratulations!!! Hooray!

    This is just the best news.

  3. I just want to say thank you for this column, Mey. I had actually never read a single comic book before reading Drawn to Comics. (Growing-up, I figured they were all overly “macho” and just generally anti-feminist — although, to be fair, at the time, most of them pretty much were.)

    But thanks to your recommendations, I now regularly read (and love!) Lumberjanes, Ms. Marvel, & The Wicked + The Divine. Super grateful that woman and/or queer-friendly comics are now a thing, and grateful to you for letting us know about them!

    • This warms my heart so much! And those are three of my favorite comics, I’m glad you love them too!

      • We got some great news from SDCC, the Eisner Awards (I loooooove Jillian & Mariko Tamaki), this graphic novel and news about some of my favorites TV shows (PoI and The 100).

        By any chance did you see the Suicide Squad trailer? Like always, you have a lot of talking about this (Whoreley Quinn was a name going around); a lot of talk for a movie still on the works with a released date for late 2016

  4. Congrats to the Lumberjanes team, and all the wins!

    God, I remember being a teenager and having Gloomcookie and Ghost World to choose from, and that felt like that was it. (Action Girl just completed its run.) Things are so different now and it’s AWESOME.

  5. yay!! i’ve been meaning to read lumberjanes for a while and now there’s another incentive to do so and further support it!
    i generally want to get more into comics, there is so much cool stuff out there now that is really accessible and makes use of this format’s potential. i’m very excited to read power up!

  6. Regarding women winning Eisners this year, I think it’s important to mention that Cece Bell’s “El Deafo” won the Eisner for Best Publication for Kids.

  7. Woohoo!!! I just bought The Lumberjane comics for my 11 year old brother and sister (and of course myself), and they are loving it!! Congratulations to the writers and artists!!

  8. I am so thankful we have Lumberjanes in our lives! There’s no comic I look forward to more each month than it. I just want to get lost in it forever!

    Oh hey, I REALLY need to recommend the new series Princeless: Raven The Pirate Princess to everyone here! It’s fantastic! It’s funny, feminist and has excellent art full of motion and excitement and like the series it spun off from, it’s about women kicking ass and rescuing themselves. This book is more grown up than the earlier series and has more adult themes. And I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet! It stars a badass WOC lesbian pirate princess! I mean seriously! She would fit right into the “Avatar: the Last Airbender” and LoK universe and I think that’s a high compliment.

    • Joining in on the Raven recommendation. Love the art team. Book flows like an action movie.

  9. it’s incredible how many ladies/queer folks/”alternative content” comics swept the Eisners this year–and SO HEARTENING. the kinds of comics winning Eisners right now are the kinds I want to read; so many Marvel and DC comics come with too much history (and also the unfortunate Dudebro Mansplaining) to be truly accessible. I hope that the comics and/or graphic novel industry continues to move in this direction of telling diverse, fascinating stories with gorgeous art SPEARHEADED BY FOLKS LIKE US!

  10. I am not a comic book person, but this column has inspired me to read more. I have my own pull list at the local comic book store. I started reading Lumberjanes to my daughter and she is now reading them to me! She’s six and just finished kindergarten. She loves to pull them out and look at the pictures and work on the words. I also got her Marceline and the Scream Queens from @heatherannehogan‘s recommendation previously and she loves that one! We have read it together at least four times. I have the first collection of Ms Marvel but haven’t read it yet, it’s next.

    Thanks for this column and your comic enthusiasm.

    • You’re welcome! And thank you! I’m really, really happy for both you and your daughter and glad that I’ve helped foster a love for comics with you!

  11. This Column got me back into reading comics a while back and totally convinced me one of the comics was totally Lumberjanes and it deserves all the praise it gets. The fact it was up against The wicked and the Divine and Ms. Marvel and still won is amazing and makes me so happy.

  12. It was ladies all the way! I have to brag a little about my friend Miriam, who was featured in Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews which won Best Scholarly/Academic work. Seeing pictures of her & her babies onstage accepting the award, it was like knowing someone who won an Oscar. Creative friends = the best.

  13. So happy Lumberjanes won 2 Eisners! And I just finished #16, baby Rosie and Abigail!

    Also very excited about the Korra comic.

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