Absolute Dominance & Injustice: On the 2026 Eisner Awards
In one hand, I hold a copy of Absolute Batman #20, fully aware that the comic I purchased a mere few days ago has already tripled in value, becoming part of what increasingly feels like a genuine modern legacy: a critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and genuinely beloved line of superhero comics. In the other hand is a sheet of pink pills that I take nightly to drag my body incrementally closer to the form that it should have taken from the outset, alongside a sheet of blue pills which function primarily to give me tits.
...anyway.
This is, admittedly, not an unbiased position.
That said, it is genuinely nice to see DC Comics, and especially the Absolute line, dominate this year's nominations. Individually, the creative teams behind these books deserve immense praise, while collectively, Scott Snyder deserves recognition for spearheading what has rapidly become one of the most creatively ambitious publishing initiatives in years.
But let’s narrow this down to the categories I actually give a shit about have opinions on...
Best Continuing Series
- Absolute Batman (DC Comics)
- Absolute Wonder Woman (DC Comics)
- The Department of Truth (Image)
- FML (Dark Horse)
- The Power Fantasy (Image)
- Storm (Marvel)
First, I had absolutely no idea that Storm was this acclaimed. That's pretty awesome; Storm is my favourite Marvel character by a wiiiiide fucking margin. I might check this out.
Second, while I would have loved to see Supergirl nominated here, I can't pretend like I genuinely expected it. Of course it would still get my vote, because objectivity is a myth invented by cowards who never truly loved anything.
But finally (and seriously), if you're only nominating two Absolute books, you've definitely picked the correct two. As much as I personally adore Absolute Wonder Woman, I think that Absolute Batman gets the obvious win here—and surely deserves it, being probably the single most discussed and verifiably highest-selling comic, industry-wide, of 2025.
Best Limited Series
- Absolute Martian Manhunter (DC Comics)
- Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rites of Spring (IDW)
- several others that stand no chance against these titans
Full transparency: I have never read Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, though I have heard the word "masterpiece" thrown around as casually as kamitape at Korakuen Hall. And I'm sure that its sequel is excellent too.
But let’s be serious for a moment. Absolute Martian Manhunter is one of those comics people will still be dissecting years from now in academic essays and YouTube retrospectives with titles like “The Comic That Broke Superheroes.” (SPOILERS!)
The book actively weaponises the formal properties of comics as a medium. Layout, colour, sequencing, perspective, negative space—everything becomes part of the storytelling machinery. Reality itself feels unstable from panel to panel. Rather than simply telling a story about alien consciousness, the comic attempts to formally recreate alien perception for the reader. It is experimental without becoming inaccessible, cerebral without losing emotional weight, and visually unlike anything else currently being published by either DC or Marvel—hell, it's visually unlike any mainstream comic book ever published by the Big Two. If this doesn’t win, I don't even know what we're doing here.
Best Writer
- Deniz Camp
- Scott Snyder
- Mariko Tamaki
- Kelly Thompson
- James Tynion IV
- Stephanie Williams
I suspect this probably goes to James Tynion IV, whose 2025 output was so prolific that I’m fairly certain he wrote at least three comics accidentally while asleep. The Department of Truth and Something is Killing the Children alone would justify serious consideration.
Personally, though, I'd give this to Kelly Thompson.
While Scott Snyder deserves immense praise in his own right, Kelly Thompson and Absolute Wonder Woman have consistently out-performed Snyder and Absolute Batman in terms of pure writing. Her prose has this almost irritating level of precision to it. Her dialogue flows effortlessly, her character voices are consistently distinct, and she has an uncanny ability to make superhero comics feel emotionally intimate without sacrificing momentum or spectacle.
Best Writer/Artist
- Juni Ba (several works)
- Jamal Campbell (Zatanna, DC Comics)
- Jesse Lonergan (Drome, 23rd St. Books)
- Chang Sheng (Yan, Titan Manga)
- Linnea Sterte (A Garden of Spheres, Peow2)
- Kazumi Yamashita (Land, Yen Press)
I genuinely have no idea who wins this category, as several of these creators are mangaka nominated for work on books that I have never even fucking heard of.
That said, having recently read Jamal Campbell’s 2025 work on Zatanna, my immediate instinct is to support him; the man is operating at a frankly absurd level artistically right now.
However, and once again, I find myself frustrated by the absence of Sophie Campbell.
Because what Sophie Campbell has been doing on Supergirl over the past year has been exceptional. The book has such a strong sense of identity that it's literally impossible to mistake it for anything else. It knows exactly what it is, who it's for, and how it wants to talk emotionally and visually. For most of its run, Supergirl has leaned into this bright, colourful, almost whimsical energy that captures the fun of superhero comics better than most books currently on shelves. Then, as the story darkens, the whole visual language shifts with it: the layouts get tighter, the colours more muted, the pages more claustrophobic. The comic literally reshapes itself around Kara's situation. And through all of it, Sophie Campbell's artwork is doing the absolute most: expressive faces, sharp character acting, dynamic layouts, and panels that carry so much emotional clarity that the dialogue sometimes feels like it's just there to keep up.
That kind of visual storytelling is still wildly underappreciated in superhero comics, which is exactly why leaving it out of this category feels so off.
One way to put it is that award systems are supposed to be measuring things against their stated criteria, but in practice they often end up drifting into something that only resembles that process. You still get something that looks like judgment on paper, but in practice it's often shaped more by secondary signals like visibility, genre reputation, and institutional habit, than by the actual formal qualities purportedly being evaluated. So the result isn't that anyone is "not being assessed" exactly, but that what's being assessed starts to feel slightly off-target, like a system of institutional bullshit is confidently producing answers to a question it isn't quite asking (Frankfurt, 1986).
Sophie Campbell is actively writing the perfect Supergirl comic—one that actually understands both the character and the medium. She deserves consideration.
———————————————————————————————————
Eisner Awards Hall of Fame
Akira Toriyama being nominated for induction into the Eisner Hall of Fame should not even remotely be a debate.
This is a creator whose work fundamentally reshaped comic books as a medium, the culture around them, and industry practices more broadly, and at a global scale. Dragon Ball was not merely a successful, widely popular manga—it is a fucking cultural juggernaut. Dragon Ball has become part of the artistic DNA of multiple generations of creators across the medium, to the point where veritable cottage industries unto themselves exist downstream from Toriyama's influence (Surrey, 2021). To leave him out would be nothing short of a crime against humanity.
———————————————————————————————————
Those are my thoughts on the 2026 Eisners. A mixture of sincere admiration, petty bitterness, trans solidarity, superhero evangelism, and increasingly concerning financial commitment to monthly comics.
In one hand, I still hold Absolute Batman #20, a comic whose value continues to rise by the hour. And in the other remains sheets of estradiol and progesterone. Both, in their own unique yet oddly similar ways, represent investment in a future that I desperately hope proves worthwhile.
———————————————————————————————————
WORKS CITED
Comic-Con. (n.d.). Eisner Awards. Comic-Con International. https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/
Frankfurt, H.G. (1986). On Bullshit. Raritan Quarterly Review, 6(2), 81-100.
Surrey, S. K. (2021). Dragon Ball: An In-Depth Examination of a Modern Mythology. Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Comments
Post a Comment