Broken Frontier proudly presents the shortlists for our 21st annual Broken Frontier Awards. Our team has selected five nominees for each of the 15 main categories that comprise the BF Awards, honouring some of the creators and publications of the past year whose work has particularly spoken to us in 2024.
As always, you will have a big say in who gets to take home an award!
The BF crew have kicked off the Broken Frontier Awards for 2024 by compiling this year’s nominations and now it’s up to you to play your part in deciding our winners in the public ballot. As ever, the final decision will come from an equal 50-50 consideration of the votes of the comics community and an extended selection of the Broken Frontier team from across recent years. Voting will run until the end of January 11th UK time, with the results to be announced on January 14th, 2025.
So, the usual (cut and pasted!) blurb at this point: our nominations look to provide an eclectic list giving as much consideration to self-published tiny print run comics and zines as we do to popular serialised genre work. Acclaimed “big name” creators sit side-by-side with newer voices you may not have discovered as yet and, as ever, there will be omissions that may surprise you. But this is a representation of work that particularly spoke to our team in 2024 and reflects the ethos, approach and values of Broken Frontier. Comics that embrace or experiment with the language of the form, work that has a socially relevant theme, and practice that comes from the direction of exciting newer voices on the scene.
We’ll also be announcing the next two names to be added to our Hall of Fame when the results go live. Our criteria for that honour is individuals or organisations who have made significant contributions not just to comics publishing but also to comics community over the course of more than a decade. Of the two names one is selected from the UK scene and will be somebody who has in some sense collaborated or worked with BF to push the medium. The other choice is an international voice who similarly works to champion the form and its practitioners.
Housekeeping notes: we choose the word “periodical” over “serial” or “serialised” for a reason. And we have included work that debuted at the tail end of 2022 as eligible. We’re also loosely defining graphic novels as being 100-plus pages in length, so graphic novellas are included in the One-Shots section, while graphic memoir that may play with meta subjectivity is still eligible in ‘Best Graphic Non-Fiction’. ‘Best Colorist’ is shorthand for best use of colour and ‘Best Letterer’ can also be interpreted that way. There may be books that could easily slot into different category definitions but we work to place things where we feel they fit best. And Breakout Talent doesn’t necessarily mean first book but rather what we may feel is a significant moment in a creator’s practice, career, development or publishing history. Artists may have been working in the medium for years (self-publishing for example) and still be eligible for that category. Yes, that may all seem rather arbitrary but, let’s face it, categorising comics always will be to some extent.
Finally, the most important part. Please check out the work of anyone featured here that you are unfamiliar with. Awards for artistic endeavour have their detractors and, indeed, we recognise that valid points can be made there. But what we hope comes across from our shortlists each year is that there’s excellent practice on offer from every direction, whether that be established household names and renowned publishers. or DIY practitioners totally unknown to you who are still assembling their comics and zines with a long-arm stapler. Comics is a wonderfully democratic scene and we hope that by elevating lesser seen but equally worthy work with this awards process each year we are also making a positive contribution to our community.
So don’t forget your input will play a vital role in the final results. Join us in celebrating some of the best indie, experimental, socially important and alt comics of the year by clicking on the blue ‘Vote now!’ button below and casting your votes in the Broken Frontier Awards 2024 from this year’s choices!
Broken Frontier Awards 2024: The Nominations
Best Writer
- Garth Ennis (2000 AD/Battle Action, Rebellion)
- James Tynion IV (The Deviant, Image Comics & The Nice House By the Sea, DC Comics)
- Marjorie Liu (Monstress, Image Comics)
- Pornsak Pichetshote (Man’s Best, BOOM! Studios)
- Ram V (Rare Flavours, BOOM! Studios)
Best Artist
- Aimée de Jongh (Lord of the Flies, Faber)
- Anna Readman (Coming Home, Re-Live & Scream! 40th Anniversary Special, Rebellion)
- Isabel Greenberg (Young Hag, Jonathan Cape)
- Jesse Lonergan (Man’s Best, BOOM! Studios)
- Shazleen Khan (Buuza!!, Self-published)
Best Colorist
- Charles Burns (Final Cut, Penguin Random House/Jonathan Cape)
- Flo Woolley (Skin Deep, Silver Sprocket)
- Joe Latham (Haru: Book 1: Spring, Andrews McMeel)
- Mereida Fajardo (There’s a Party in My Body (and You’re All Invited), Self-published)
- Norm Konyu (A Fall from Grace, Self-published)
Best Letterer
- Aditya Bidikar (The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos, Dark Horse Comics)
- Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (Zatanna: Bring Down the House, DC Comics)
- Nate Piekos (Black Hammer: The End/Spiral City, Dark Horse Comics)
- Rob Jones (Blinded, Spotlight)
- Rus Wootton (Monstress, Image Comics)
Breakout Talent
- Beth Hetland (Tender, Fantagraphics Books)
- Bhanu Pratap (Cutting Season, Fantagraphics Underground)
- J. Webster Sharp (The Scrapbook of Life and Death, Avery Hill Publishing)
- Joe Latham (Haru: Book 1: Spring, Andrews McMeel)
- Mollie Ray (Giant, Faber)
Best Periodical Series
- mini kuš! (Anthology series – multiple creators, kuš! comics)
- Monster Fun (Anthology series – multiple creators, Rebellion)
- PeePee PooPoo (Caroline Cash, Silver Sprocket)
- The Phoenix (Anthology series – multiple creators, David Fickling Comics)
- Rare Flavours (Ram V, Filipe Andrade & Andworld Design, BOOM! Studios)
Best New Periodical Series
- Epitaphs from the Abyss (Anthology, multiple creators, Oni Press)
- Hate Revisited! (Peter Bagge with D. Carrino, Fantagraphics Books)
- Man’s Best (Pornsak Pichetshote, Jesse Lonergan & Jeff Powell, BOOM! Studios)
- The Pedestrian (Joey Esposito, Sean Von Gorman, Magma Comix)
- The Rocketfellers (Peter J. Tomasi, Francis Manapul & Rob Leigh, Image Comics/Ghost Machine)
Best One-Shot
- Autobiography Has Become a Stone in My Shoe (Peony Gent, Self-published)
- Dwellings: All Hallows Eve Special #1 (Jay Stephens, Oni Press)
- Jacques and the Great Art Theft (Chris Baldie & Adrian Bloch, Self-published)
- My Body Unspooling (Leo Fox, Silver Sprocket)
- Sunflowers (Keezy Young, Silver Sprocket)
Best One-Shot Anthology
- Becoming Who We Are: Real Stories About Growing Up Trans (Edited by Sammy Lisel and Hazel Newlevant, multiple creators, A Wave Blue World)
- Lebanon is Burning and Other Dispatches (Yazan Al-Saadi and multiple artists, Graphic Mundi)
- Let Her Be Evil (Edited by Cassandra Jones, multiple creators)
- Tall Tales & Short Stories (Edited by Mike Armstrong, multiple creators WIP Comics)
- Won’t Back Down: An Anthology of Pro-Choice Comics (Edited by Trina Robins, multiple creators, Last Gasp)
Best Webcomic
- Buuza!! (Shazleen Khan)
- Muscle Memory: A Survivor’s Story (Al Davison)
- Nap Comix (Rachael Smith)
- Stop! Project 2025 (online anthology, multiple creators)
- The War on Gaza (Joe Sacco)
Best Graphic Novel
- Anfield Road (Chris Shepherd, Titan)
- Final Cut (Charles Burns, Penguin Random House/Jonathan Cape)
- Lord of the Flies (Aimée de Jongh, Faber)
- Mary Tyler MooreHawk (Dave Baker, Top Shelf Productions)
- My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two (Emil Ferris, Fantagraphics Books)
Best Graphic Non-Fiction
- Adrift on a Painted Sea (Tim Bird, Avery Hill Publishing)
- Brittle Joints (Maria Sweeney, Street Noise Books)
- Lavender Clouds (Bex Ollerton, Andrews McMeel)
- Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the U.S. (Caitlin Cass, Fantagraphics Books)
- They Shot the Piano Player (Fernando Trueba & Javier Marascal, SelfMadeHero)
Best Collection of Classic Material
- 40 Years of Scream!: The Archival Collection (Anthology – multiple creators, Rebellion/Treasury of British Comics)
- All in Line (Saul Steinberg, New York Review Books)
- The Atlas Artist Edition No. 1: Joe Maneely (Fantagraphics Books)
- Second Hand Love (Yamada Murasaki, Drawn & Quarterly)
- Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies 1935-1939 (Anthology – multiple creators, Fantagraphics Books)
Best Book on Comics
- Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry (Rafael Medoff & Craig Yoe, Dark Horse Comics)
- Comic Papers, Music Hall & Early Cinema (Alan Clark, Half-Holiday)
- Comics 1964-2024 ( Thierry Groensteen, Lucas Hureau, Anne Lemonnier, Emmanuel Payen, et al, Thames & Hudson)
- Comic Book Implosion (Expanded Edition): An Oral History of DC Comics Circa 1978 (Keith Dallas & John Wells, TwoMorrows Publishing)
- Seattle Samurai: A Cartoonist’s Perspective of the Japanese American Experience (Kelly Goto & Sam Goto, Chin Music Press)
Best Publisher
- Avery Hill Publishing
- Drawn & Quarterly
- Fantagraphics Books
- SelfMadeHero
- Silver Sprocket
Broken Frontier Hall of Fame
- 2017 – Annie Koyama (Koyama Press)
- 2018 – Corinne Pearlman (Myriad Editions)
- 2019 – David Schilter and Sanita Muižniece (kuš! comics)
- 2020 – Gosh! Comics
- 2021 – Steve Walsh (Gosh! Comics, Avery Hill Publishing)
- 2022 – Avery Hill Publishing and C. Spike Trotman (Iron Circus Comics)
- 2023 – Thought Bubble and Toronto Comic Art Festival (TCAF)
- 2024 – ??? and ???
Thank you for voting in the Broken Frontier Awards for 2024!
