The Ignatz nominees have been announced, to be awarded at the Small Press Expo on September 15th. And while the presence of women among the nominees is not unusual considering they are indie awards, something about this year’s nominees caught my attention.
Alongside the expected nomination of Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant collection and the nod towards Leslie Stein’s Eye of the Majestic Creature and Gabrielle Bell’s Lucky, there is a very pleasant surprise in the “Promising New Talent” nominees.
Or rather, five pleasant surprises.
All five of the Ignatz nominees for Promising New Talent are women.
- Lauren Barnett for Me Likes You Very Much
- Clara Besijelle for The Lobster King
- Tessa Brunton for Passage
- Lila Quintero Weaver for Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White
- Lale Westvind for Hot Dog Beach
I can’t say for sure that this has never happened before, that women dominated an entire category, but one can’t help but sense some poignancy in the idea that all of last year’s “promising new talent” were women. We hear it all the time from the likes of Scott McCloud, Jessica Abel, and the SCAD Sequential Art department that girls are making up more and more of their students and have begun to dominate their classes—on one level, it’s not surprising. But outside of comics we see women getting more educated at higher rates than men and it still hasn’t led to equal pay or parity in the boardroom either. Are comics bucking that trend? Only time will tell, but I sure hope so.
Other nominees include Inés Estrada for Ojitos Borrosos, Corinne Mucha for The Monkey in the Basement and Other Delusions, Julia Gfrörer for Black is the Color, and Jillian Tamaki for SuperMutant Magic Academy.
