Manga Shut Out of the Eisner Awards

At last night's Eisner Awards ceremony at San Diego-Comic-Con, Dark Horse Comic's edition of Old Boy by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi won the inaugural "Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Japan" award, beating out Antique Bakery, The Walking Man and Naoki Urasawa's Monster.

But in all other categories, the 11 other manga titles nominated for the 2007 Eisners were shut out by books from DC, Marvel and Fantagraphics, including multi-award winners Paul Pope's Batman 100, Fables (DC/Vertigo) and author Neil Gaiman (Sandman).

Ironically, this confirmed the "old boys' club" of the Eisner Awards voting block: the U.S. mainstream comic book retailers and publishers. To me, this snub illustrated this group's general lack of appreciation / awareness of the truly great manga titles that are out there now. While the Eisner manga nominees were all good books, none could be called "fan favorites," like Death Note or Bleach.

So while the ceremony was fun and it was great to see all the nominees, I left the San Diego Convention Center ballroom somewhat disappointed. I hope that next year the Eisner voters will wise up to what's really great about Japanese comics and vote like they actually know and LIKE manga.

• See a gallery of the manga that the Eisners forgot
• Complete list of Eisner Award winners