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Manga Nominated for 2009 Eisner Awards

The 2009 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards panel of judges has announced its nominees for the best works in the comic book industry. Japanese manga titles garnered one nomination each for the Continuing Series, Publication for Kids, and Archival Collection–Comic Books categories. Five titles are vying to be the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan. Comic Con International will host the awards ceremony on July 24 in San Diego.

Naoki Urasawa's Monster suspense manga (Viz Media) garnered the first of its two nominations for Best Continuing Series. Monster was also nominated in the same category last year. The manga is competing against four other titles including Japanese-American artist Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (Dark Horse Comics).

Akira Toriyama is competing in the Best Publication for Kids category with his Cowa! manga (Viz Media). Also in the category is Amulet, Book 1: The Stonekeeper (Scholastic Graphix) by Kazu Kabuishi, the Japanese-American editor of the Flight anthologies.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is up for the Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books award for his Good-Bye manga (Drawn & Quarterly). "Murder He Wrote," Ian Boothby, Nina Matsumoto, and Andrew Pepoy's Death Note parody in The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror #14 (Bongo), was nominated for Best Short Story. Matsumoto, the Canadian artist whose Internet popularity jumped after she posted an anime-inspired drawing of The Simpsons cast, also drew the Yōkaiden title for Del Rey and drew a Simpsons comic short that paid homage to anime in Bongo Comics' Free Comic Book Day issue this year.

The five manga in the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan category are:

Cat Eyed Boy
Kazuo Umezu
Viz Media


Dororo
Osamu Tezuka
Vertical


Naoki Urasawa's Monster
Naoki Urasawa
Viz Media


The Quest for the Missing Girl
Jiro Taniguchi
Fanfare / Ponent Mon


Solanin
Inio Asano
Viz Media


Source: Publishers Weekly's The Beat blog