2009 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
Winners and nominees

2009 was a big year for Dark Horse. Not only did they led all publishers with 13 individual nominations and 5 shared, they took home the most trophies of any publisher as well. Mignola was the big winner with three Eisners, while Hellboy spin-off, B.P.R.D., netted Guy Davis the Eisner for Best Penciler. Bill Willingham deservingly won an Eisner for Best Writer, and All-Star Superman won Best Continuing Series, presumably because of how long it took to come out, the twelve issue series running from November 2005 to October 2008. 

Interesting to see websites now winning the award for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism. I guess that speaks to the decline of the print medium, but it makes me wonder, if the website shuts down there's a chance that all that Eisner award winning content is lost to the sands of time, or the fickleness of the Wayback Machine. The Cartoonist Kayfabe boys often do videos on old Wizard or Comic Book Journals. It's hard to see any reminiscing over websites in the future, but perhaps there will be.

Eddie Campbell has a nomination! I was a big fan of Eddie's work throughout the 90s on Bacchus, Alec and From Hell, and often wondered what he did post-From Hell. I will have to check that out.

Matt Wagner's Madame Xanadu did well in the nominations. I love Wagner, so there's another title I need to find time for. 

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work continues to be nominated. I saw an interview on Cartoonist Kayfabe with Adrian Tomine where he talked about the effort he made to get Tatsumi's work into print. 

Monster continues to be nominated as one of the best continuing series of the era. That's cool to see. There are times when the Eisner voters act like manga begins and ends with Tezuka. I'm happy to see a contemporary mangaka being recognized (outside of the reprint category, that is.)

Usagi got a nomination! I don't know what was happening in Usagi in 2008 (never got that far), but I'm glad to see the nomination as his work was continually overlooked in the early years of the Eisner Awards. 
 
I see Terry Moore had a new series in 2008. I assume that was post Strangers in Paradise. Vertigo seemed to do well with new series nominations in 2009. I'm not really familiar with this era of Vertigo. I did not know there was an Eisner Award winning Iron Man series from 2008. I wonder how long that run lasted. 

I could have sworn Asterios Polyp was older than 2009; but, I see it wasn't. I think it might be because he may have discussed it in a Comics Journal interview, when he was doing Rubber Blanket, as it was originally intended there. When we got it in Barnes & Noble, I think I must have assumed it was a reprint.

The Bill Finger Award, which started as a joke comment, became a sort of FU to certain parties. If memory serves, Gary Friedrich's award here, was tied to his legal battle over Ghost Rider. Otto Binder had been pushed out in the writer's purge of 1968, along with personal issues, around the death of his daughter. The man was most responsible for the success of the Marvel Family, at Fawcett, with his inventive and charming stories, which led to him doing the same for the Superman and related titles, after Fawcett shut down.

2011 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
Nominees
Winners

This appears to be the year where IDW burst onto the scene in terms of winning Eisner Awards with Joe Hill taking home best Writer for Locke & Key and Darwyn Cooke winning Best Writer/Artist for his Parker book. Other than that, there's not much to say about these awards. Chew was recognized which was nice to see, as was Juanjo Guarnido's beautiful artwork on Blacksad. Tardi won two awards, which is excellent. Urawawa continues to be regarded as the preeminent mangaka of the era, which is interesting, and the voters continued to be interested in Shanower's Oz work. American Vampire is a new book for me, and highlights that Vertigo was still quite successful at this time, even if I think of their major runs being largely over by this point. 

A minor controversy was resolved with Todd Klein winning Best Letterer after not being nominated for a few years. 

2013 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
Winners and nominees

And now for the comics that became classics in 2022. 

There weren't any major surprises at the 2013 Eisners. Chris Ware took home 4 Eisners for his graphic novel, Building Stories, which is largely considered his masterpiece. It had a unique publication design as it came in a box set with fourteen different printed works, including cloth-bound books, newspapers, flipbooks, etc. The other big winner was Saga, which was a smash hit from the beginning and probably lays claim to being the book of the 2010s. Oddly, Fiona Staples didn't achieve much recognition for her part in making Saga a success, though that would quickly change. Other notable winners include David Aja for his work on Hawkeye (which I haven't read yet), Juanjo Guarnido for Best Painter, and Blacksad and Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys as best US reprints. Cooke also continued to woo voters with his work on Parker. 

Among the nominees, Athos in America was a well-received Jason book. Eric Shanower had another Oz book out, and I've heard good things about Hope Larson's adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. Charles Burns had a new graphic novel out this year. Unterzakhn has its fans. Both of the Hernandez brothers were nominated for the Best Writer/Artist category, which was a bit of makeup, in many people's eyes, for not being nominated for the previous year's Love and Rockets volume. 

Best Continuing Series is an eye-opener. Four out of the five nominees were published by Image, which is recognition, I suppose, of Image's status as a leading publisher of creator-owned content. Jonathan Hickman is a name I know but haven't read anything by. Manhattan Projects seems like a solid jumping on spot. 

One thing I've noted about the modern Eisner Awards is that you don't get a lot of consistency from one year to the next. The year before, Mark Waid's Daredevil swept the Eisners, but in 2013 it was barely nominated. You can't tell me the quality of the book dropped off so far it was no longer a contender for best series. Having a different group of judges each year means the focus often shifts from the mainstream to the smaller publishers. The organizers seem a bit sensitive about too Hollywood, and too Oscary, despite adding more ritz to the ceremony each year. There have been some consistent nominees in the 00s, but a lot of books, like 100 Bullets, for example, generate buzz and are seldom nominated again. 

My plan, at this stage, is to begin a more detailed look at the 2014 Eisner Award winners beginning in January, as 2023 is the year where they become classic comics. Hopefully, that will give me a bit of time to catch up on the 90s and 00s Eisner works I've glossed over in the past several weeks. 

Burns had touched on the "teen plague" theme earlier in shorter pieces. Black Hole felt like the full exploration of the idea that he had to get out.

I haven't read enough from this century to tell whether Asterios Polyp is the best work that's been produced thus far, but it's a major feat in cartooning. I think I may have mentioned that I was disappointed when David Mazzucchelli ditched penciling mainstream superhero comics to become an alternative cartoonist, largely because the change in style was so drastic, but it led a masterpiece. Mazzucchelli is one of the few artists who can claim to have created important works at both ends of the spectrum.