SAN DIEGO – The 24th annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards will be held Friday, July 13 in the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. This year’s title sponsor is Syfy, the television destination for imagination-based entertainment. Syfy features acclaimed original series, events, blockbuster movies, and classic science fiction and fantasy programming, and will present four exciting series at Comic-Con this year: Warehouse 13, Alphas, Being Human, and groundbreaking transmedia entertainment property Defiance.
The Eisner Awards, considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry, will be given out in 28 categories, for works published in 2011. Awards presenters will include British talk show host and comics author Jonathan Ross; author George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones); The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard; actress Erin Gray (Buck Rogers); voice actor Phil LaMarr (Futurama, Young Justice); cartoonist Bill Morrison (The Simpsons); nominee Eric Powell (The Goon); and Comic-Con special guests Tom Batiuk (Funky Winkerbean), Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse), Michael Uslan (Batman movie producer and Archie comics writer), and Sergio Aragonés (MAD magazine). A few surprise celebrity presenters can be expected as well.
The doors for the event will open at 7:45, and the ceremonies will get under way at 8:00. Attendance at the event is free to anyone with a Comic-Con badge. Advance seating for VIPs (nominees, sponsors, presenters) and those with pro badges will begin at 7:00. The ceremony is expected to run until about 10:30. All who attend the awards ceremony will receive a graphic novel from the Will Eisner Library, published by DC Comics.
In addition to Syfy as the title sponsor, the major sponsor for the Eisner Awards is mycomicshop.com. Principal sponsors are Gentle Giant Studios and Lebonfon, while supporting sponsors are Alternate Reality Comics (Las Vegas), Atlantis Fantasyworld (Santa Cruz, CA), Diamond Comic Distributors, Flying Colors and Other Cool Stuff (Concord, CA), Strange Adventures (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Warp 1 Comics & Games (Edmonton, Alberta), and Mel Thompson and Associates.
The Eisner Awards evening includes the presentation of several other special awards, given by both Comic-Con International and other organizations. Comic-Con’s own awards are the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award, the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award, the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing Award, and the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.
The Eisner Awards are part of, and underwritten by, Comic-Con International, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to creating awareness of and appreciation for comics and related popular art forms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contributions of comics to art and culture. More information about the Eisner Awards can be found at http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_main.php.
