Eisner nominee Steve Bryant describes Athena Voltaire as a globetrotting 1930s aviatrix who fights Nazis and various bad guys in the style of Indiana Jones. All Athena Voltaire images ™ & © 2003 Steve Bryant, Paul Daly,

Every summer, comics creators and publishers from around the globe gather in San Diego for the pop culture celebration that is Comic-Con International. One of the highlights of the show is the gala ceremony announcing the winners of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards — the Eisners — being held this year on July 15.

This year’s Eisners include a new breed of comics creators — nominees for Best Digital Comic. The addition of the category is a benchmark, spotlighting important recognition for these new media creators.

“New categories are rarely added; they are more likely to be combined (Best Comics-Related Periodical/Book) or dropped (Best Editor),” says Jackie Estrada, Eisner Awards administrator. “For the last few years I have asked the judges ahead of time to consider adding this category, since there are a lot of webcomics folks who think their work is award worthy and who have gotten worked up on message boards when the nominations are announced only to see that such a category is not included.”

“This was the first year the judges decided to go with it,” Estrada continues. “That’s primarily because one of the judges, Steve Conley (who happens to be a webmaster and who has had his own online strip, Astounding Space Thrills), came up with parameters of what would qualify, including that the work had to be on a professional site, that it had to be in long-form comics, and that it couldn’t include animation, etc. He also created a site for the other judges to access the list of submitted sites so they could view them.

This year’s judges for the Eisner Awards are (left to right) Tom Russo, Katharine Kan, Steve Conley, Tom McLean and Gib Bickel. This year the category of Best Digital Comic has been created. Courtesy of Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

Dreaming in Digital
Eisner Award judges Tom McLean (Hollywood Reporter, “Bags ‘n’ Boards” blog), Tom Russo (Entertainment Weekly, Premiere), retailer Gib Bickel (The Laughing Ogre, Columbus, Ohio), graphic novel librarian and reviewer Kat Kan and cartoonist/webmaster Steve Conley (Astounding Space Thrills, comicon.com) gave the nomination nod to five digital artists and their creations — Steve Bryant (Athena Voltaire), Kazu (Copper), Les McClaine (Jonny Crossbones), Brian Fies (Mom’s Cancer) and Matt Forsythe (Ojingogo).

“I’m more honored by the nomination than I can express,” says Fies, creator, Mom’s Cancer. “The new category certainly recognizes the web as a legitimate medium for good, interesting work that may not even be intended for print. In the long run, I’m really interested to see if ‘digital comics’ will become their own unique thing distinct from other types of comics, the way television became something different than movies or radio-with-pictures.”