2026 Ignatz Awards Winners
These winners of the 2026 Ignatz Awards have arrived!
The 29th annual Ignatz Awards were announced on September 12 at Small Press Expo. Alas, I was not in attendance this year (holiday and all that) so instead of frantically taking notes and typing this up at, like, 2 am, I've got the luxury of time to get it out. Below are the winners of the 2026 Ignatz Awards, honoring the year’s best independent and small press comics.
Outstanding Anthology
"LAAB: A Comics Anthology No. 3," ed. by Ronald Wimberly (Beehive Books)
Also subtitled 'Three's Company," the fourth (yes, you read that right,) and latest issue of this experimental not-quite-an-essay-collection, not-quite-a-critical-journal, not-quite-a-comics-newspaper is organized around – you guessed it – the number three, from the holy trinity to the menage a trois. The erotic, the sacred, the profane, the 1970s sitcom, brought to you by an all-star lineup of cartoonists, authors, illustrators, artists and more.
Outstanding Artist
Carol Tyler for "The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief" (Fantagraphics.)
Chicago-born Carol Tyler is a cartoonist who bridged underground and alternative comics with her debut in Weirdo magazine in 1987 and went on to publish collections such as "The Job Thing" (1993) "Late Bloomer" (2005,) her Eisner Award-nominated biography of her father "Soldier's Heart", and her teenage obsession with the Beatles, pulled from her 1965 diary in Fab4 Mania (2018.) A teacher of Sequential Art at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, she is a CXC Master Cartoonist and a Slate Studio Prize winner.
The work for which she wins this award is an exploration of grief described by the publisher as "Tyler's most breathtaking picture making ever — fine, dense brush lines complemented with occasional color washes or highlights — and formally stunning cartooning."
Outstanding Collection
"All the Cameras in My Room" by Michael DeForge (Drawn & Quarterly)
The heir to the squash and stretch, Michael DeForge's second collection of short stories burrows deep into the folds of a reader’s brain as it breaks down how we consume pop culture, interrogates our relationship to star power and recontextualizes our nostalgia into a shared mythology, cementing his place as the most consistent and beguiling cartoonist working today.
Outstanding Comic
"Zoo #5" by Anand Shenoy (Self-Published)
"Zoo" is a one-person anthology, now on it's fifth issue, by Indian creator Anand Shenoy. This issue contains three stories about guilt, plagiarism, a parallel history of Indian alternative comics, grief, and going to watch pornography in the theatres.
Outstanding Graphic Novel
"Cannon" by Lee Lai (Drawn & Quarterly/Giramondo Publishing)
The multi-award winning graphic novel by Australian cartoonist Lee Lai ("Stone Fruit.") The full palette of a nervous breakdown is just a part of what is on offer in this work which explores the intimacy of queer friendship and the weight of family responsibility. It is also, to keep quoting the copy, mordantly funny and emotionally turbulent slice of friendship strife. No, I'm not sure what mordantly means and I'm too afraid to look it up.
Outstanding Mini-Comic
"Uncoiling: A Japanese-American Family History" by Yoko O.K. (Self-Published)
A 27-page family immigration story distilled from the writings of three of the writer's ancestors: her great-grandmother Shizuko Kikuchi, her great-uncle Charles Kikuchi (author of The Kikuchi Diary, University of Illinois Press, 1973) and great-aunt Alice Kikuchi Hiromura. Part talk-show interview where Yoko interviews her deceased ancestors, part adventure storytelling based on what she learns from these relatives, the story centers mainly on her great-grandparents' immigration to California between 1905 and 1913, and the ensuing chaos.
(I found this tidbit also really cool.) This comic was workshopped and illustrated between January and July 2025 through the Portfolio Program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, OR, risograph printed in fluorescent pink and teal ink, and officially released at Short Run Comix Festival in November 2025.
Outstanding Online Comic
"Blind Alley" by Adam de Souza (Webcomic)
A comic strip is about growing up in the strange and lonely neighborhood of Blind Alley. A misanthropic "Peanuts" for the now, acerbic and pointed, just like da youts.
Outstanding Series
"Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas" by Sanika Phawde (Self-Published)
Full of humor and tenderness, "Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas" is a series about the chaos of planning a traditional wedding in India when you and your white fiancée are stuck in the United States. Now a two time Ignatz winner.
Outstanding Story
"Drome" by Jesse Lonergan (23rd Street)
"Drome" is Jesse Lonergan at his most formalist and raw. Colors bloom, colors burst. Ink and void interweave and fight. A creation story told through CMYK, mostly silent and suffused with awe.
Promising New Talent
"A Scientific Study of Transsexuality" by Oscar Woodiwiss (Fieldmouse Press)
A satirical fictional scientific journal that explores the expression of transsexuality in nature, originally published as a part of the 2023 ShortBox Fair. Woodiwiss moves deftly from the microscopic to the cosmic, interrogating cultural norms and affirming the sensual beauty of the trans body.
Once you’re done with this year’s winners, check out the Ignatz Archive for past winners and nominees, currently going back to 2019. The Ignatz will return next year at the 33rd SPX, held...whenever SPX is happening in 2027. Either September 11th or 18th.
And for more SPX-related content, consider subscribing! I got a bunch of coverage from last year and still more to come from those books.
Elias Rosner
Elias Rosner
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