kuš! guide for the Ignatz awards

The Ignatz Awards are probably the most important awards in the alternative comics scene. The awards are named after the brick throwing mouse Ignatz from Herrimann's classic must-read Krazy Kat comics. The prize is a brick which the winning cartoonist can throw at their fellow competitors or put on the desk as a letter holder or something, well a pretty cool award we think!

The jury - Edie Fake, Minty Lewis, Dylan Meconis, Lark Pien and Julia Wertz - in our opinion did a very good job! We are very excited that they nominated 6 kuš! contributors in 5 categories in a total of 8 nominations! The awards will be selected by the attendees of the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland. So if you go there, this is how you probably should vote:

Outstanding Artist
Inés Estrada - Ojitos Borrosos (Self-published)
Matthew Thurber – 1 800 Mice (Picturebox)

OUTSTANDING!!!! Yes!!!! Well, only a bit unfortunate as we have featured two of the Outstanding Artist Nominees, so it is hard to pick sides, but we can highly recommend to vote for either of them! Inés Estrada is truly outstanding! She contributed comics to kuš! #8 'allotments' and made the cover of the Angouleme award winning š! #9 'female secrets', this one:

Matthew Thurber contributed a story to kuš! #7 'music'. So here is an excerpt of that:

Outstanding Anthology or Collection
The Man Who Grew His Beard - Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics)
Ojitos Borrosos - Inés Estrada (Self-published)

Again two artists you have read in kuš!... well here's an excerpt of Ollie's contribution to kuš! #6 'strange creatures':

Inés got nominated for her self published (!) book Ojitos Borrosos (click and buy!), a very great collection of her comics! In there is also the story she made for the female secrets š!, here's an excerpt of that:

Outstanding Story
1 800 Mice by Matthew Thurber (Picturebox)

In this category is only one kuš! contributor, so here you can easily vote for  Matthew's 1 800 Mice. No more excerpts, if you already forgot what he contributed to kuš!, then scroll back up please. 

Outstanding Series
Black Mass by Patrick Kyle (Mother Books)

Patrick Kyle is a future kuš! contributor. Annie Koyama invited him to take part in the upcoming š! #12. We highly look forward to that. Hopefully he still gets the story done after his success at the SPX (you know fame and all...). We don't have any excerpt of that story yet, so we stole a pic from his tumblr to show a sample of his work:

Outstanding Mini-Comic
The Death of Elijah Lovejoy by Noah Van Sciver (2D Cloud)
RAV #6 by Mickey Zacchilli (Self-published)

Noah Van Sciver doesn't only contribute to kuš!, but he also reads it as this picture from John Porcellino's Facebook King Cat Tour album proves:

But instead of showing an excerpt of his comics he made for š! #10 sea stories (if you want to see what he drew there, you should buy it), we show his acceptance speech comics he drew already 2 years ago (got that from his tumblr that you should follow):

Mickey Zacchilli also got nom'd! She made a story for our female secrets issue, instead of an excerpt of that, better read her own review of her outsnanding mini comoic from her tumblr:

Well, we are very excited that so many of our contributors are nominated! We, of course, knew that they are outstanding before, but now they got also the Ignatz seal of proof! We wish them as well as the other excellent nominees all the best to win those awards!

So go and VOTE VOTE VOTE! And if you are not at the SPX like us, then just visit the artists' websites and buy their comics!