Manga comes to the Eisners

The 2007 Eisner award nominations are up, and unlike last year, manga is well represented.

In fact, they added a whole new category for manga:

Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan.

After School Nightmare, by Setona Mizushiro (Go! Comi)
Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (Digital Manga)
Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)
Old Boy, by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi (Dark Horse Manga)
Walking Man, by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

Japanese and global manga were also nominated in a number of other categories:

Best Continuing Series
Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)

Best New Series
East Coast Rising, by Becky Cloonan (Tokyopop)

Best Anthology
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, edited by Frédéric Boilet (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

Best Reality-Based Work
Project X Challengers: Cup Noodle, by Tadashi Katoh (Digital Manga)

Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books
Abandon the Old In Tokyo, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)
Ode to Kirihito, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)

Special Recognition
Ross Campbell, Abandoned (Tokyopop); Wet Moon 2 (Oni)
Svetlana Chmakova, Dramacon (Tokyopop)

A few notes: As welcome as the Japan category is, it seems almost dated, now that so many publishers are bringing in manga from all over—manhwa from Korea, nouvelle manga from France, yaoi from Italy.

Also, I realize that East Coast Rising and The Abandoned are not exactly traditional manga, but they’re published by Tokyopop and referred to as global manga, so in they go.

Any way you slice it, this is a huge increase over previous years, and looking at the quality of the works nominated, it’s quite appropriate. Congratulations, everyone!

UPDATE: I just noticed something else: The Best Comics-Related Periodical category has been updated to Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism and two blogs that I read daily (and frequently link to) are nominated: Dirk Deppey’s Journalista and Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter. The awesomeness of this cannot be overstated. Congrats, guys!