With the Eisner Award nominations still fresh on everyone’s minds, I thought I’d take a look this time at some of the nominees you can read for free online, starting with one of the nominations for “Best Short Story.”
The Beekeeper’s Due by Jimmy Stamp and Débora Santos originally appeared in Scott Snyder Presents: Tales from the Cloakroom, a collection of stories by students in Snyder’s Substack writing course. The anthology was crowdfunded, so it might not be as easy to find as the other stories it is competing against from Marvel, DC and Z2, which could hurt its chances.
But the creators have a remedy for that — put it out on the web for free.
“Just making The Beekeeper’s Due with [Débora Santos] was the realization of a lifelong dream. But an Eisner nomination? I never came close to dreaming this big,” Stamp said on Twitter. “We’re so grateful to the judges for recognizing our little indie comic alongside such incredible stories.”
You can find it on Stamp’s website in full, and he notes that print and digital editions of “The Beekeeper’s Due” with extra pages of story and art, essays, and original script will be available in the fall.
Deeply Dave is an animated webcomic about a son searching for his lost mother in the depths of the ocean, where he encounters all manner of creatures and dangers. Luckily he has a knife! Deeply Dave is one of the nominees in this year’s “Best Webcomic” category at the Eisners, and it’s by Grover, who has made a bunch of other fun animated webcomics you can find here.
The Mannamong by Michael Adam Lengyel is also nominated in the “Best Webcomics” category, and it’s a story about a girl who encounters mythical spirits known as the mannamong, which were “born through Mother Nature’s powers in order to sustain the world’s natural order.” The first volume is also available in print.
I was glad to see the expanded False Knees story “Spores” nominated this year, also in the “Best Webcomics” category. Joshua Barkman’s strip is typically a four-panel comic strip featuring various animals doing funny things, but last October Barkman told a longer, 31-day story featuring his trademark animals and something of extraterrestrial origins. You can read it here.
These three strips will have their work cut out for them in the “Best Webcomics” category, as they’re going up against two veterans — the latest Delilah Dirk, which is subtitled Practical Defence Against Piracy, by Tony Cliff, and the mega-popular Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe. Best of luck to all of this year’s nominees!
The New Stuff Is Worth Looking Into!