The 2026 Eisner Nominations Includes the First Work Featuring AI?
The nominees for the 2026 Eisner awards were announced today and with it some controversy. We’re not talking the usual frustration with who was chosen and who was omitted. This year’s nominees includes what might be the first inclusion of work featuring AI.
Stardust the Super Wizard Anthology was nominated this year under “Best Anthology.” Managed by Van Jensen, the anthology was backed with an impressive amount of talent and raised over $39,000 from 614 supporters on the Zoop crowdfunding platform.
One of those who contributed was Michael Todasco using his “AI persona,” Alex Irons for an included page. Todasco seemed to have boasted of the inclusion on LinkedIn and you can see his page further below.
The inclusion of the AI generated story wasn’t disclosed in the original campaign and Todasco nor “Alex Irons” are mentioned on the campaign page but are in the table of content in a story unironically called, “Artificial.”
When it comes to the use of AI in Eisner submissions, we can’t find anything that prohibits it. The FAQ and “call for entries” don’t mention the topic. We’ve reached out to the team for any clarification and will update this article when/if we hear back. The eligibility is rather simple:
Eligibility: Any comic, graphic novel/album, or comics-related periodical/book shipped to retailers or bookstores or first made available online in the U.S. between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025 is eligible. Publications must not be more than 50 percent reprint material (except in the graphic album– reprint and archival categories); international material published for the first time in English the United States in 2025 is eligible.
So, congrats to whatever system that was trained on the hard work Fletcher Hanks and your Eisner nomination!
Below is the page in question.
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Wow, that genAI comic looks like dog shit.
The sheer unmitigated gall of using the words “creative heart” in something you generated with the plagiarism machine
I funded the book because friends had a story included. I would never have done so had I known about this. I’m furious on my behalf, and on theirs, that it wasn’t disclosed during the Zoop funding cycle.
I funded it too for similar reasons and yeah, not happy this was never disclosed. No idea when it was chosen to be included.
And it’s not even the kind of dogshit that genAI is particularly helpful in making! I mean, that page could’ve easily been made with old-school copy-paste plus a tiny bit of regular drawing in 20 minutes. I’m half convinced that it *was* made that way, and they just said “AI” to make it sound cooler – or to distance themselves from the shoddy work they did. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Fletcher Hanks’ “story structure” (if structure is even a word that can be applied to Hanks).