Broken Frontier Awards 2016: Announcing the Winners – Tillie Walden and Tom King Dominate as Indie, Small Press and the Big Three All Converge

Broken Frontier proudly announces the winners of the 13th annual BF Awards, as voted for by you our readers and the BF team.

From the big players in the monthly serial comics arena to the very best practitioners of hand-stapled DIY zines, this year’s Broken Frontier Awards shortlist certainly represented the breadth and diversity of approaches to the medium covered on the site in 2016. Indeed, our winners – revealed below – include everyone from self-published artists producing comics with three-figure print runs to writers breathing new life into much explored super-hero concepts.

Two names dominate this year, though, and for good reason. Tillie Walden has been much covered here at Broken Frontier since Avery Hill Publishing gave us an exclusive preview of her critically lauded The End of Summer two years ago. She was our Breakout Talent Award winner last year and we interviewed her once again at BF not so long ago here. Her phenomenal – inexorable, even – rise in the medium is justly recognised with the Best Artist and Best One-Shot Awards.

Tom King’s work has been notable for its tight plotting, clever foreshadowing and neat twists in books like The Vision, The Sheriff of Babylon, Omega Men and Batman over the last year. His growing reputation as one of the most exciting writers in serial comics was firmly cemented in 2016. No wonder he was a firm favourite in the Best Writer section. Two books he wrote (The Vision and The Sheriff of Babylon) also took Best Ongoing Series and Best Limited Series (based on their original designations by publishers!). The Vision‘s impact was further underlined by Jordie Bellaire’s second Best Colorist Award in two years.

As ever, the Breakout Talent Award took the most public votes and was our fiercest fought category. This one is always a close-run thing but this year it perhaps fittingly went to Rozi Hathaway, one of the artists from our first 2015 ‘Six Small Press Creators to Watch‘ coverage. Hathaway had a phenomenal year in 2016, becoming one of the most well-known new faces on the UK small press scene and self-publishing two acclaimed solo books. They included Njálla which gained high praise from no less than Warren Ellis himself who described it as “a remarkably pure piece of fabulist storytelling”.

In the Best Publisher section there seems to be no stopping Image Comics who beat out Fantagraphics and boutique publishers Avery Hill Publishing, Breakdown Press and Retrofit Comics once again. Image have now won that category a remarkable six times in the last seven years, underlining the enduring popularity of their output.

Congratulations to not just all our winners but all our nominees as well. Scroll down for a complete overview of the Broken Frontier Awards 2016. And thank you once again to all our readers for your most appreciated support of the BF Awards and for sharing our ballot on social media!

Best Writer: Tom King (The Vision, The Sheriff of Babylon)

Other nominees:

• G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel)
• Jeff Lemire (Black Hammer, Descender)
• Ryan North (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jughead)
• Steve Orlando (Midnighter, Namesake)

Best Artist: Tillie Walden (A City Inside, On a Sunbeam)

Other nominees:

• Chris Samnee (Black Widow)
• Eduardo Risso (Dark Night: A True Batman Story, Moonshine)
• Joelle Jones (Lady Killer 2)
• Lorena Alvarez (Nightlights)

Best Colorist: Jordie Bellaire (Injection, The Vision, The Autumnlands)

Other nominees:

• Dave Stewart (Black Hammer, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D., House of Penance)
• Elizabeth Breitweiser (Outcast, Kill or Be Killed)
• Matt Hollingsworth (Seven to Eternity, Tokyo Ghost)
• Tamra Bonvillain (Angel Catbird, Doom Patrol, Wayward)

Best Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher (Paper Girls, Moonshine)

• Clayton Cowles (Batman, Bitch Planet, The Wicked + The Divine)
• Jodi Wynne (Wonder Woman, Black Magick)
• Nate Piekos (Angel Catbird)
• Thomas Mauer (4 Kids Walk into a Bank, Namesake)

Breakout Talent: Rozi Hathaway (Njálla, Ø)

Other nominees:

• Chris Hunt (Carver: A Paris Story)
• Grace Wilson (Saving Grace)
• Jade Sarson (For the Love of God, Marie!)
• Matthew Rosenberg (4 Kids Walk into a Bank)

Best New Series: Black Hammer (Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston and Dave Stewart, Dark Horse)

Other nominees:

• All-Star Batman (Scott Snyder, John Romita Jr., Danny Miki et al., DC)
• Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye (Jon Rivera, Gerard Way, Michael Avon Oeming et al., DC)
• Dept. H (Matt Kindt, Sharlene Kindt, Dark Horse)
• Minor Leagues (Simon Moreton, Self-published)

Best Ongoing Series: The Vision (Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Jordie Bellaire et al., Marvel)

Other nominees:

• Archie (Mark Waid, Veronica Fish et al., Archie Comics)
• Frontier (Eleanor Davis, Kelly Kwang and Richie Pope, Youth in Decline)
• Harrow County (Cullen Bunn, Tyler Crook et al., Dark Horse)
• Paper Girls (Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang et al., Image)

Best Limited Series: The Sheriff of Babylon (Tom King, Mitch Gerads, John Paul Leon, et al., DC/Vertigo)

Other nominees:

• 4 Kids Walk into a Bank (Matthew Rosenberg, Tyler Boss and Thomas Mauer, Black Mask Studios)
• Carver: A Paris Story (Chris Hunt, Z2 Comics)
• Second Sight (David Hine and Alberto Ponticelli, Aftershock)
• The Violent (Ed Brisson, Adam Gorham and Michael Garland, Image)

Best One-Shot: A City Inside (Tillie Walden, Avery Hill Publishing)

Other nominees:

• Arctic Comics Volume 2 (Michael Kusugak, Jose Kusugak, Germaine Arnaktauyok et al., Renegade Arts)
• The Artist (Anna Haifisch, Breakdown Press)
• Fear of Mum-Death and the Shadow Men (Wallis Eates, Self-published)
• Summerland (Paloma Dawkins, Retrofit/Big Planet)

Best Graphic Novel: Patience (Daniel Clowes, Fantagraphics)

Other nominees:

• The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Sonny Liew, Pantheon)
• Don’t Come in Here (Patrick Kyle, Koyama Press)
• For the Love of God, Marie! (Jade Sarson, Myriad Editions)
• March Book Three (John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, Top Shelf)

Best Book on Comics: CBLDF Presents: She Changed Comics (Edited by Betsy Gomez, Maren Williams and Caitlin McCabe, Image)

Other nominees:

• Comic Book Fever: A Celebration of Comics 1976-1986 (George Khoury, TwoMorrows)
• Ed Brubaker: Conversations (Edited by Terrence R. Wandtke, University Press of Mississippi)
• Forging the Past: Seth and the Art of Memory (Daniel Marrone, University Press of Mississippi)
• The Mighty One: My Life Inside the Nerve Centre (Steve MacManus, Rebellion)

Best Publisher: Image Comics

Other nominees:

• Avery Hill Publishing
• Breakdown Press
• Fantagraphics
• Retrofit/Big Planet