Following the announcement last month of the 18 judge’s picks for the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the nomination committee has announced the 16 creators who will go on the 2026 ballot. Four of them will be chosen by voters to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The 16 nominees are Kate Carew, Colleen Doran, George Evans, Crockett Johnson, Peter Kuper, George McManus, Kevin Nowlan, Mimi Pond, Posy Simmonds, Jeff Smith, Paul Smith, Leonard Starr, Akira Toriyama, Mark Waid, Chris Ware and S. Clay Wilson.
They were chosen by a committee that includes Michael T. Gilbert, Karen Green, Alonso Nuñez, Diana Schutz, Jim Thompson and Maggie Thompson. Votes will be cast as part of the Eisner Awards by eligible voters, with the winners being announced during this summer’s Comic-Con International in San Diego.
You can find more information on each of the nominees, provided by CCI, below.
Kate Carew (1869–1961)
Mary Williams, who used the pseudonym Kate Carew, studied at the San Francisco School of Design and started her career in illustrating in 1889, when she was employed by the San Francisco Examiner. A year later, she moved to New York to work for The New York Globe, where she created several comics, including “The Angel Child.” Her caricatures and interviews became so popular that she was sent to Europe to make the series “Kate Carew Abroad.” In 1911, she settled in London and did work for The Patrician and Tatler. At the start of World War I she moved back to the States and continued working for newspapers such as The New York Tribune.
Colleen Doran (1964– )
Award-winning writer/artist Colleen Doran came on to the comics scene in the early 1980s with her creator-owned series A Distant Soil. Her published works now number in the hundreds, with clients such as The Walt Disney Company, Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, Image Comics, Lucasfilm, Dark Horse, Harper Collins, Houghton Mifflin, Sony, and Scholastic. Her credits include Amazing Spiderman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Sandman, Wonder Woman, The Legion of Superheroes, Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, A Distant Soil, The Silver Surfer, Neil Gaimon’s Chivalry, and Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible Stan Lee, among many others.
George Evans (1920–2001)
After working for Fiction House and Fawcett in the late 1940s, artist George Evans joined EC Comics in 1953, working for Harvey Kurtzman on Two Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat and with Al Feldstein on The Haunt of Fear and Weird Science. When EC collapsed in 1956, he went to Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated line and did “Space Conquerors” for Boy’s Life magazine. In the early 1960s he worked for DC (Blackhawk) and Gold Key (Twilight Zone, Hercules Unchained), and then Warren’s Eerie and Creepy. In 1980, he succeeded Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson on Secret Agent Corrigan, a syndicated comic strip he continued until 1996. During the 1980s and 1990s, he also drew for such publishers as Pacific (Vanguard Illustrated), Eclipse (Airboy), Marvel (The Nam) and Dark Horse (Classic Star Wars).
Crockett Johnson (1906–1975)
Crockett Johnson achieved lasting comic strip industry fame when he created the enormously popular syndicated strip “Barnaby” in 1941. It lasted 21 years and was adapted for a book, a play, television, and radio. In 1940 Johnson married children’s author Ruth Krauss, with whom he would collaborate on four children’s books. He wrote and illustrated Harold and the Purple Crayon, a critically acclaimed story of an imaginative boy who draws fantastic landscapes with his crayon, in 1955. Harold enjoyed further adventures in six sequels between 1956 and 1963, as well as being adapted for animated films and television.
Peter Kuper (1958– )
Peter Kuper has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The Nation, and MAD magazine, where he wrote and drew “SPY vs. SPY” every issue from 1997 to 2022. His “Eye of the Beholder” was the first comic strip to ever regularly appear in the New York Times. He is the co-founder and editor of World War 3 Illustrated, a political graphics magazine that has given a forum to political artists for over 40 years. He has produced over two dozen books, including The System, Diario de Oaxaca, Ruins, and adaptations of many of Franz Kafka’s works into comics. His latest graphic novel is Insectopolis, a graphic novel on the history of insects.
George McManus (1884–1954)
George McManus dropped out of school at age 15 and started working at the St. Louis Republic. This newspaper published his first comic, “Alma and Oliver.” In 1904, he moved to New York and was employed by the New York World, where he worked on several strips, including “The Newlyweds,” about an elegant young couple and their baby, Snookums. This series, the first family strip in an American newspaper, became quite popular and caused rival newspaper The New York American to invite McManus to work for them, which he did from 1912 on. He continued “The Newlyweds” and started up several other daily comics, most notably “Bringing Up Father.” This comic about an Irish immigrant worker, Jiggs, and his wife Maggie, inspired several movies—in four of them, McManus himself played the role of Jiggs. McManus influenced a great number of artists, including Herge and Joost Swarte.
Kevin Nowlan (1958– )
Artist Kevin Nowlan has worked for both Marvel (Doctor Strange, Moon Knight, and others) and DC (Superman vs Aliens and others), as well as Dark Horse (Aliens Salvation with writer Dave Gibbons and penciller Mike Mignola) and other publishers. Perhaps his most prominent contribution to the comic book world is the creation of Jack B. Quick with writer Alan Moore. This character appeared several times in Alan Moore’s Tomorrow Stories under Moore’s America’s Best Comics imprint.
Mimi Pond (1956– )
Mimi Pond sold her first comics to National Lampoon while working as a waitress. In 1982, her book The Valley Girls Guide to Life (Dell) became a bestseller and launched her career. From that moment on, she published several other humor books, including Secrets of the Powder Room (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983), Shoes Never Lie (Berkley Books, 1985), A Groom of One’s Own (Dutton, 1991) and Splitting Hairs (Simon and Schuster, 1998). Her more recent graphic novels include the memoirs Over Easy, The Customer Is Always Wrong, and Do Admit: the Mitford Sisters and Me. Pond also wrote scripts for several TV series, including Designing Women (1986–1993), Pee-wee’s Playhouse (1986–1990), and the pilot episode of The Simpsons: “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” (1989).
Posy Simmonds (1945– )
British cartoonist Rosemary Elizabeth “Posy” Simmonds has managed to make her mark in the graphic novel publishing world by reinventing classic literature into illustrated novels for adults. She is best known for her long association with London’s The Guardian, where she serialized Gemma Bovery (2000; made into a film in 2014) and Tamara Drewe (2005–2006; made into a film in 2010) before their publication in book form. In 1987, she began to write and illustrate children’s books, creating such works as Lulu and the Flying Babies (1988) and Fred (1987), the film version of which was nominated for an Oscar. She was made a Member of the British Empire in 2002 for her services to the newspaper industry, and she received the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 2024.
Jeff Smith (1960– )
Jeff Smith is the creator of the award-winning comic book series Bone. He and his wife Vijaya Iyer established Cartoon Books in 1991 to self-publish the series. Jeff was a pioneer in comics publishing for kids when Bone launched Scholastic’s graphic novel imprint Graphix Books in 2005. Smith’s other award-winning and acclaimed comics include SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil, RASL, Little Mouse Gets Ready!, ROSE, and Bone: Tall Tales. His most recent project, TUKI, ran as a webcomic series from 2013 to 2016, followed by two graphic novels. In 2015 Jeff helped found the annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus festival.
Paul Smith (1953– )
Paul Smith’s comics career began at Marvel in the early 1980s, with runs as the artist on Uncanny X-Men and Doctor Strange. Often described as having a “smooth” and elegant, animation-influenced style, Smith is considered a fan-favorite artist who helped define the look of iconic characters during his relatively short but impactful run. He famously designed the iconic “punk” look for Storm (black leather, mohawk), which debuted in Uncanny X-Men #173. Smith subsequently worked on a range of comics titles, including The Golden Age (DC) and Leave It to Chance (Marvel), both collaborations with writer James Robinson. Smith also contributed art to a number of First Comics titles, including American Flagg!, Nexus, and GrimJack, and Marvel’s Kitty Pryde: Shadow and Flame limited series.
Leonard Starr (1925–2015)
Leonard Starr began his career in the early 1940s Golden Age of comic books, drawing Sub-Mariner and Human Torch stories for Timely and Don Winslow stories for Fawcett. He also worked for a variety of other publishers, including Better Publications, Consolidated Book, Croyden Publications, E. R. Ross Publishing, Hillman Periodicals, and Crestwood. His first work for newspapers was ghosting the Flash Gordon strip for King Features in the mid-1950s. His own strip, Mary Perkins On Stage, began via the Chicago Tribune–New York News Syndicate in 1957; he drew it until 1979. He was then hired by the same syndicate to revive the Little Orphan Annie strip, which he wrote and drew until his retirement in 2000. He also, in tandem with fellow strip artist Stan Drake, created a series of popular graphic novels named for their title character, Kelly Green.
Akira Toriyama (1955–2024)
Akira Toriyama became well known for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball. In 1981, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for Dr. Slump, which sold over 35 million copies in Japan and was also made into a successful anime TV show. Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular manga worldwide. It sold 260 million copies, making it one of the bestselling manga series ever. The Dragon Ball anime shows helped make anime popular in Western countries. Toriyama also designed characters for many popular video games.
Mark Waid (1962– )
Over the course of his four decades in the comic book industry, Mark Waid has developed characters and written stories for Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The Avengers, X-Men, Archie, Star Wars, The Incredibles, Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Daredevil, Captain America and almost every other franchise currently enjoying success across all media platforms. Kingdom Come, which he co-created for DC Comics, has become one of the best-selling graphic novels in history. Many of the storylines and characters he wrote and created in his eight-year run on The Flash comic were featured on the hit television series. Outside the realm of superheroes, Mark has created and written the detective procedural Potter’s Field and the horror mystery The Unknown, among others.
Chris Ware (1967– )
Known for his New Yorker magazine covers, award-winning cartoonist Chris Ware is hailed as a master of the comics artform. His complex graphic novels tell stories about people in suburban Midwestern neighborhoods, poignantly reflecting on the role memory plays in constructing identity. Stories featuring many of Ware’s protagonists—Quimby the Mouse, Rusty Brown, and Jimmy Corrigan—often first appeared in serialized form, in publications such as The New York Times, the Guardian, or Ware’s own ongoing comic book series Acme Novelty Library, before being organized into their own stand-alone books. His work has appeared in many national and international art exhibits, including solo exhibitions at the Gavle Kunstcentrum in Sweden, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and as part of the Masters of American Comics traveling exhibit.
S. Clay Wilson (1941–2021)
Perhaps the most outrageous of the underground comix artists, S. Clay Wilson created wild illustrations full of violent and sexual imagery that crossed every boundary of taste. His signature series was “The Checkered Demon” (1968–1994), which debuted in the second issue of ZAP Comix. Wilson was an influence on many comics creators, among them Alan Moore as well as his own colleagues in the underground comix scene. Wilson’s work appeared in Arcade, The Realist, Playboy, Hustler, Weirdo, and LA Weekly, among other publications. In the 1990s he also illustrated the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, collected as Wilson’s Andersen: Seven Stories by Andersen (1994) and Wilson’s Grimm (1999). In 2008 Wilson suffered a traumatic brain injury and was severely disabled until his death in 2021.