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Beastars, Cats of the Louvre, Magic Knight Rayearth, More Nominated for Eisner Awards

Comic-Con International announced the nominees for this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards on Thursday.

Kousuke Oono's The Way of the Househusband is nominated in the Best Humor Publication category, while Kabi Nagata's My Solo Exchange Diary (volume 2) is nominated in the Best Reality-Based Work category. Gou Tanabe's H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness (volumes 1, 2) manga is nominated alongside Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo: The Complete Grasscutter Artist Select comic for Best Adaptation from Another Medium. Shin'ichi Abe's That Miyoko Asagaya Feeling is also nominated with Sakai's comic for the Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books award. Additionally, Sakai is nominated for Usagi Yojimbo in the Best Lettering category.

The Women's Manga in Asia and Beyond: Uniting Different Cultures and Identities book edited by Fusami Ogi, Rebecca Suter, Kazumi Nagaike, and John A. Lent is nominated in the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category.

Five manga titles are competing for the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia award (the sixth nominee is Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's Grass):

BEASTARS
Paru Itagaki
Viz Media
Translated by Tomo Kimura

Cats of the Louvre
Taiyo Matsumoto
Viz Media
Translated by Michael Arias

Magic Knight Rayearth 25th Anniversary Edition
CLAMP
Kodansha Comics
Translated by Melissa Tanaka

The Poe Clan
Moto Hagio
Fantagraphics Books
Translated by Rachel Thorn

Witch Hat Atelier
Kamome Shirahama
Kodansha Comics
Translated by Stephen Kohler

Voting is open to all comic book industry professionals until June 18, and the winners will be announced in July. The announcement noted that the selection process took two months longer than normal as the judges stayed in their homes during "lockdown" instead of interacting in person. The results in all categories are normally announced in a gala awards ceremony at San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) in July. However, the organizers cancelled this year's event due to the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. SDCC will instead hold the "Comic-Con@Home" event this summer.

This year manga creators Moto Hagio and Keiji Nakazawa are among the 14 nominees for the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame. The previous Japanese inductees of the Eisner Hall of Fame were Osamu Tezuka (2002), Kazuo Koike (2004), Goseki Kojima (2004), Katsuhiro Ōtomo (2012), and Rumiko Takahashi (2018).

Sources: Comic-Con International: San Diego (link 2), Ben Applegate's Twitter account