The Eisner Awards: A Brief History The Eisner Awards were not always the Eisner Awards. At one point they were the Kirby Awards—sort of. Back in 1984, Fantagraphics Books instituted the Jack Kirby Awards to honor the best works and creators in comics. The administrator of the awards was Dave Olbrich, a Fantagraphics employee. The awards were given out beginning in 1985 in programs at the San Diego Comic Convention, with beloved comics artist Jack Kirby on hand to congratulate the winners. When Olbrich left Fantagraphics for other pursuits in 1987, the Kirby Awards ended and two new awards programs were born: Fantagraphics started the Harvey Awards (named after Harvey Kurtzman), and Olbrich started the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (named, of course, after the venerated creator of The Spirit and numerous graphic novels). Initially, Olbrich set up the Eisners as a nonprofit organization, with funding from sponsors such as comics distributors, retailer associations, and printers. The awards were still given out at the San Diego Comic-Con, with Olbrich serving as the MC and with Eisner himself on stage to hand out the awards. The first Eisners were conferred in 1988, for works published in 1987. Olbrich administered the awards for two years with a one-year gap in 1990. It was obvious that if the awards were to continue, they would need an administrator who could devote specific amounts of time per month (by this point Olbrich had become publisher of Malibu Comics, certainly more than a full time job), as well as secure funding that could underwrite the basics of
The winners from the first Kirby Awards in 1985 (l to r): Dave Stevens, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, cat yronwode, Don Thompson, Dick Giordano, Jerry Bingham, and Kirby Awards administrator Dave Olbrich.
the show from year to year. At the 1990 San Diego Comic-Con, a meeting was held (which I was asked to attend) with Olbrich, Will Eisner, Denis Kitchen, and Fae Desmond (executive director of ComicCon). The idea proposed was that Comic-Con, a nonprofit organization, take over the Eisners and that I be appointed the administrator. The meeting was quite congenial, and we all felt the proposal was the best way to assure the continuation of these awards. Subsequently Fae took it to Comic-Con’s Board of Directors, which approved it enthusiastically. So in 1990 I took on the administrating chores, with much help from Olbrich in turning over the reins. The first year continued with the same format that had been used previously with the Kirbys
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and Harveys: Send out blank nominating ballots to a mailing list of publishers, editors, and distributors and then send final ballots to a mailing list of creators and retailers. But in 1992 (for works published in 1991), a judging panel was instituted to handle the nominating process. This was done for two main reasons. First, it was obvious that many good works and creators were falling through the cracks in the nominations process simply because they had not been widely seen. It was suggested that this problem be addressed by accompanying nominating ballots with a list of all works published the previous year. Compiling such a list turned out not to be feasible. A better method was the nominating panel which was commonly used at awards
January-March: Entries are submitted.
November: Judges announced.
HOW THE EISNER AWARDS WORK
BY Jackie Estrada Eisner Awards Administrator
December-January Call for Entries announced and mailed. Photo by Jackie Estrada.