Ed.'s note: I received another press release from Eric at Fantagraphics Books. Now, TCJ can't seem to get an Eisner nomination on an annual basis, but a highly-considered organization outside comics honors them... again?
For the second time in three years, the Seattle-based magazine of comics news and criticism, THE COMICS JOURNAL, is one of eight nominees for UTNE magazine's "Utne Independent Press Awards." TCJ, which won the award in 2002, is again nominated this year in the "Arts/Creativity Coverage" category...
The winners of the award are chosen annually by the editors of Utne Magazine, "the nation's leading magazine of alternative ideas," from around 1300 magazines that they follow, from hand-dcribbled zines to manicured glossies. With a paid circulation of 225,000, the Utne readership is a large multiple of The Comics Journal's, so we're immensely grateful for the recognition and exposure. TCJ is nominated alongside some excellent company: The Believer, Cabinet, Harp, Public Art Review, Punk Planet, Stop Smiling, and Wax Poetics.
The recipients of this year's award will be announced in the January/February 2006 issue of UTNE, which should hit stands in a little under two months.
The latest issue of TCJ (#271), in stores now, features career-spanning interviews with acclaimed author Renee French ("The Soap Lady") and onetime National Cartoonists Society President Jerry Robinson (and co-creator of the Joker in the 1930s), as well as a jaw-dropping 50-page section of pre-Popeye Thimble Theater strips by E.C. Segar and a massive article on Sheldon "Sugar & Spike" Mayer by the esteemed critic Donald Phelps, as well as much more. The Comics Journal is published by Fantagraphics Books, Inc., and edited by Gary Groth, Dirk Deppey, and Michael Dean, and art directed by Adam Grano.
