Two comics by ladies have been shortlisted for the 2012 Stan Lee Excelsior Award: Sita: Daughter of the Earth, written by Saraswati Nagpal, and Gate 7 vol.1 by CLAMP!
The Stan Lee Excelsior Award is the only comics award (that I’m aware of, anyway) where kids, aged 11-16 from 66 participating UK schools, choose the winner by rating each book as they read it! And it’s really exciting to see such diversity of interest amongst kids— of the 8 shortlisted titles, only three are superheroes, one each from Marvel, DC, and Image. I’m very curious about the gender breakdown of the readership and who ranked each book what, but for now I’ll just settle for congratulating Nagpal and CLAMP, and hope that we can get this or similar awards/reading programs spread all over the world!
