The Small Press Expo (SPX) has announced the 2020 nominees for the annual presentation of the Ignatz Awards, a celebration of outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning.

The Ignatz, named after George Herriman’s brick-wielding mouse from his long running comic strip Krazy Kat, recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. The Ignatz Awards are a festival prize, the first of such in the United States comic book industry. The 2020 Ignatz Awards are sponsored by Politics & Prose, a D.C. based independent bookstore devoted to cultivating community and strengthening the common good through books, programs, and a respectful exchange of ideas.

The nominees for the ballot were determined by a panel of the best of today’s comics professionals, Scott Cederlund, November Garcia, Malala Gharib, and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. Voting beings August 31 and continues until September 9. Register to vote via the SPX website. Everyone registering to vote after the initial ballots are mailed on August 31 will be emailed ballots soon after registration.

Outstanding Artist

• Ana Galvañ – Press Enter to Continue
• Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
• Tianran Qu – Slices of Life 100 Comic Montage
• Michael DeForge – Familiar Face
• Katie Hicks – Guts

Outstanding Anthology

• Dates III – edited by Zora Gilbert & Cat Parra
• Be Gay, Do Comics – edited by The Nib
• LAAB Magazine #4 – edited by Ronald Wimberly & Joshua O’Neill
• The Anthology of Mind – Tommi Musturi
• Sweaty Palms Volume 2 – Sage Coffey

Outstanding Collection

• GLEEM – Eddy Carrasco
• Glenn Ganges in: The River at Night – Kevin Huizenga
• Inappropriate – Gabrielle Bell
• Slices of Life: 100 Comic Montage – Tianran Qu
• The Complete Works of Fante Bukowski – Noah Van Sciver

Outstanding Comic

• Cosmoknights – Hannah Templer
• My Dog Ivy – Gabrielle Bell
• Cry Wolf Girl – Ariel Ries
• Theth Tomorrow Forever – Josh Bayer
• Mooncakes – Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker

Outstanding Graphic Novel

• Hot Comb – Ebony Flowers
• Pittsburgh – Frank Santoro
• Skip – Molly Mendoza
• How I Tried to be a Good Person – Ulli Lust
• This Was Our Pact – Ryan Andrews

Outstanding Minicomic

• The Gulf – Nguyen Nguyen
• Chapter Two – Keren Katz
• Canvas – Theo K. Stultz
• I Feel Weird #4 – Haleigh Buck
• Black Hole Heart – Cathy G Johnson

Outstanding Online Comic

• I Exist – Breena Nuñez
• Like the Tide – Isabella Rotman
• SUPERPOSE – Joe Seosamh & C. Anka
• Gabby Schulz (@gabbyschulz)
• Witchy – Ariel Ries

Outstanding Series

• The Misplaced – Chris Callahan
• Fizzle – Whit Taylor
• SUPERPOSE – Joe Seosamh & C. Anka
• kuš! – kuš! komiks
• Frontier – Youth in Decline

Outstanding Story

• The Lab – Allison Conway
• The Hard Tomorrow – Eleanor Davis
• The Weight #9 – Melissa Mendes
• “Little Red Riding Hood” – Inappropriate – Gabrielle Bell
• BTTM FDRS – Ezra Daniels & Ben Passmore

Promising New Talent

• AJ Dungo
• Sylvia Nickerson
• Theo Stultz
• Emil Wilson
• Andrew Lorenzi