Hilary B. Price wins the 2023 Reuben Award

Jay Stephens, Evan Dahm, Sarah Andersen and more win NCS divisional awards.

Hilary B. Price, creator of Rhymes with Orange and the youngest woman to ever have a nationally syndicated comic strip, has won this year’s Reuben Award.

The National Cartoonists Society presented the award last weekend at their annual conference in San Diego. Price was one of six nominees for the award this year, in a field that also included Daniel Clowes, Darrin Bell, Dana Simpson, Mark Tatulli and Will Henry.

Price launched the comic strip in 1995, and it’s remained an award-winning staple of the comics page ever since, winning multiple divisional awards from the National Cartoonists Society. She’s also been nominated for the Reuben Award multiple times in the past.

Rhymes With Orange has been my expressive outlet from my mid-twenties through my mid-forties,” Price told us back in 2018. “There’s a lot of change in that time – from sleeping on a futon to having a box spring and mattress, from negotiating roommates to negotiating a mortgage, from weddings to divorces. I remember a relative noting that when the strip first started, it was a window into the life of a twenty-something, but as I aged, the topics hit a broader audience. For example, more people are in the settled down phase than in the just starting out phase, so gags about long term relationships hit a wider mark than the hook-up at parties gags.”

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Jay Stephens + Oni Press are preparing more ‘Dwellings’ to haunt your nightmares

The bloody ode to Harvey Comics returns with a Halloween special in October and a new miniseries next year.

One of the delightfully horrific surprises to arrive in comics in the past few years was Jay Stephens’ Dwellings, which started life as a crowdfunded project but went on to be published by Oni Press and pick up an NCS Divisional Awards nomination.

And now it’s coming back, as Oni Press has announced not only a Halloween special for October, but also a new miniseries for next year.

The ‘Saturday Morning’ meets ‘Stroke Of Midnight’ retro cute horror is back just in time for tricks and treats! The Dwellings: All Hallows’ Eve Special arrives this October, with all the old-school fake ads and blood-stained vintage kids’ comics stylings you’ve come to squeamishly love,” said Stephens. “This standalone story brings us back to the haunted streets of Elwich for a tale about a tall, dark, and handsome visitor Hell-bent on hunting down the monsters who hide in the town’s shadows. Set in the tight-knit underground ‘Sangunarian’ Elwich goth scene, “Come Hither” flips the classic bloodsucker tale in it’s grave, as a delusional, self-proclaimed ‘vampire hunter’ seduces the black-clad youth one by one in order to lay them to rest for eternity. Happy Halloween, Dwellers!”

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Jay Stephens, Jesús Hervás, Daniel Clowes, Darren Bell + more nominated in this year’s NCS divisional awards

The National Cartoonist Society has announced the divisional nominees for the 78th Annual NCS Reuben Awards.

The National Cartoonists Society has announced the 2023 NCS Divisional finalists for the 78th Annual NCS Reuben Awards, which annually recognize creators of comic strips, illustrations, comic books and more. The winners will be announced Aug. 23, and the nominees for their biggest award, the Reuben itself, should be announced soon.

The awards recognize the artist or cartoonist, so you’ll see that the specific work, the writer and the publisher aren’t called out in the nominations. This year’s nominees in the comic book category include Jesús Hervás, artist of Invasive and What If? Venom; Kelly Phillips, creator of Apricot Dumplings; and Jay Stephens, creator of Dwellings. In the graphic novel category, the nominees include The Talk creator Darren Bell, Monica creator Daniel Clowes and Sarah Bollinger, artist of Malcolm Kid and the Perfect Song.

Webcomics creators are recognized in two categories — long form and short form. In the long-form category, the nominees include Brad Guigar, Evan Dahm and Jason Chatfield. In the short-form category, Sarah AndersenJim Benton and Dee Fish have been nominated.

Here’s the full list of nominees across all the categories for this year:

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Oni Press will publish Jay Stephens’ horrifying Harvey Comics tribute ‘Dwellings’

The three-issue prestige series begins in August.

Cartoonist/animator Jay Stephens will team with Oni Press for a new printing of Dwellings, his bloody ode to Harvey Comics and the rot that lives beneath suburbia.

Stephens previously crowdfunded the series, which won a Doug Wright Award last year. Oni will publish three 72-page prestige format issues of Dwellings bi-monthly starting in August.

“As a young collector in the days before the internet, before our town even dreamt of a comic shop, I remember walking the train tracks on weekends, hunting back issues at garage sales and flea markets, picking up whatever I could find,” Stephens said. “Though considered uncool, I was magnetically attracted to the irresistibly adorable Harvey comics… Casper, Spooky, Wendy and Hot Stuff in particular… and always kept an eye out for that one issue where they finally revealed who murdered Casper the Friendly Ghost. If the definition of nostalgia is to ‘return home in pain,’ Dwellings is the most nostalgic work I’ve ever produced. And my re-imagining of that darker Harvey Comics backstory has festered and intertwined with my personal fears into something truly frightening.”

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2022 Doug Wright Awards winners announced

Congratulations to this year’s winners.

The Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” presented their 2022 awards over the weekend during the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

This was their first in-person awards ceremony since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020. The event was hosted by film critic Richard Crouse, and featured appearances by Jenn Woodall, David Collier and Dustin Harbin. The outdoor event was also livestreamed, but unfortunately the wind makes the audio very difficult to hear.

Here are the winners:

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Fund me Monday: Domino Books, Jay Stephens and more

Find out about crowdfunding projects by Austin English, Vera Greentea, Charlie Stickney and Black Eye Books.

As crowdfunding continues to be a viable method for creators to fund their creative endeavors and connect directly with fans, comic-related projects flourish on sites like Kickstarter, Patreon, IndieGoGo and others. Here’s a look at a few recent campaigns that caught our eyes.

New Comics + Distribution by DOMINO

Who is involved? Domino Books, a small press publisher run by Austin English
Deadline: July 31
Goal: $6,000

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