The nominees for the 2023 Locus Awards have been announced by Locus Magazine. While they don’t have a dedicated comics or graphic novel category like a lot of science fiction literary awards do these days, they do have an “Illustrated and Art Book” category where a few graphic novels have popped up.
It makes for some strange bedfellows for sure, as a handful of graphic novels will compete against an illustrated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and art books by science fiction artists, including a project collecting the artwork of Rowena that was spearheaded by comic artist Kim DeMulder.
But it’s nice to see comics sneaking their way into the awards, and who knows — maybe they’ll add a graphic novel category someday.
The graphic novels nominated in the category include:
Chivalry, the graphic novel adaptation of a Neil Gaiman short story by artist Colleen Doran, published by Dark Horse
The Night Eaters Book 1: She Eats the Night, by the Monstress team of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, published by Abrams ComicArts
The Keeper, by writers Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes with art by Marco Finnegan, published by Megascope
Mother Christmas, Vol 1: The Muse, written by Valya Dudycz Lupescu with art by Vic Terra, published by Rosarium
The other nominees in the category are:
- Visions of Beauty, Dianne Borsini-Burr, ed., art by Kinuko Y. Craft (Borsini-Burr & Imaginary Editions)
- Paintings & Drawings of Rowena, Kim DeMulder, art by Rowena (self-published)
- In the Black Fantastic, Ekow Eshun (Thames & Hudson; MIT Press)
- Spectrum Fantastic Art Quarterly Volume Two, Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Spectrum Fantastic Art)
- Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, George Orwell, art by Omar Rayyan (Suntup)
- Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections, Shaun Tan (Walker Studio UK; Windy Hollow; Levine Querido)
You can see all the nominees across all the different categories on the Locus site, where you’ll note Charles Vess has once again been nominated for “Best Artist,” and several notable prose writers who have gone on to write comics appear in some of the other categories.
One thought on “‘Chivalry,’ ‘The Night Eaters’ nominated in the Locus Awards”