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Shigeru Mizuki's Showa Manga Wins Eisner Award
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
Shigeru Mizuki's Showa 1939-1944: A History of Japan and Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan manga won the 2015 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia at San Diego Comic Con on Friday.
The manga was competing against the following titles: Ryōsuke Takeuchi, Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Yoshitoshi ABe, and Takeshi Obata's All You Need Is Kill; Moyoco Anno's In Clothes Called Fat; Hokusei Katushika and Naoki Urasawa's Master Keaton volume 1; ONE and Yūsuke Murata's One-Punch Man; and Mamoru Hosoda, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, and Yū's Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki.
Mizuki himself was born in 1922, and has previously drawn on his experiences in World War II for his Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths manga. Mizuki originally wrote Showa: A History of Showa Japan in 1988-1989 (the Showa era ended in 1989), and Kodansha published it in eight compiled volumes in 1994. Drawn & Quarterly is releasing the manga in North America. The manga was nominated for a Harvey Award last year in the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category.
Additionally, Stan Sakai won the Best Lettering award at this year's Eisner Awards for his Usagi Yojimbo: Senso and Usagi Yojimbo Color Special: The Artist books. Sakai was also nominated for Best Writer/Artist for the same books, but Raina Telgemeier won the award for Sisters.
Viz Media's Hello Kitty, Hello 40: A Celebration in 40 Stories book was nominated in the Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 7) category, but it lost to Ariel Cohn and Aron Nels Steinke's The Zoo Box. Fantagraphics' Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It — edited by Ann Ishii, Chip Kidd, & Graham Kolbeins — was nominated in the Best Anthology category, but Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream won the award.
PictureBox's release of Osamu Tezuka's The Mysterious Underground Men won the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia award last year. Other nominees included Shigeru Mizuki's Showa: A History of Japan, 1926–1939, Mato Hagio's The Heart of Thomas, Yemmakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi's The Summit of the Gods, and Asumiko Nakamura's Utsubora: The Story of a Novelist.
Source: Brigid Alverson
