The Eisner Awards judges have chosen two legendary artists for induction into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2016: Carl Burgos and Tove Jansson. They've also nominated 14 other creators, from which number voters will choose four to induct into the Hall of Fame at a ceremony at this year's San Diego Comic-Con in July.

 

Carl Burgos
Carl Burgos
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Carl Burgos was a cornerstone of the Golden Age at Timely Comics, the company that would later become Marvel. He was the writer/artist solely responsible for the first Human Torch story, and created the iconic "yellow nimbus/red body/black stripes" look that has stayed with every version of the character to this day.

 

Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson
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Tove Jansson was a Finnish writer/artist who created the Moomin characters, who gained international popularity throughout the mid 20th Century in a series of widely translated children's books and a comic strip. She also wrote novels and short stories.

The other nominees are an interesting and diverse group, incorporating underground legends like Barry and Griffith, mainstream legends like Trimpe and Pérez, and of course Groening, who started as the former and became far more famous than even the latter through his creation of the Simpsons TV show.

 

Carl Burgos
Carl Burgos
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From the press release:

 

All voting is online. To vote, you must be a professional working in the comics or related industries as a creator (writer, artist, cartoonist, colorist, letterer), a publisher or editor, a retailer (comics store owner or manager), a graphic novels librarian, or a comics historian/educator. Eligible voters can visitwww.eisnervote.com to register (or to sign in if they have voted in the past) and then select up to four picks in the Hall of Fame category. The deadline for voting is April 1.

The 2016 Eisner Awards judging panel consists of journalist/reviewer Brian Doherty, comics writer/editor Danny Fingeroth, retailer Jason Grazulis (BSI Comics, Metairie, LA), librarian Jason M. Poole (Webster Public Library, Webster, NY), Comic-Con International board member Natalie Powell, and academic/scholar Carol Tilley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

Submissions are currently being accepted in the other Eisner categories; the deadline is March 18. The nominees for these categories will be announced in mid-April.

 

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