by BK Munn
The nominations for the 2018 Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning have been unveiled and this year’s slate is another collection of books by the cutting edge of comix makers. The winners of the awards, chosen by the celebrity jury of Bo Doodley, Jim Munroe, Marc Ngui, and Pamela Marie Pierce, will be announced at a gala ceremony at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in May.
In addition to the awards, every year the Doug Wright organization inducts a cartoonist into its Hall of Fame, The Giants of the North. This year the inductee is Duncan MacPherson, the legendary editorial cartoonist for the Toronto Star and Maclean’s magazine. Toronto-born MacPherson (1924-1993) used his virtuoso talents to lampoon Canadian foibles from the Diefenbaker years through the 1970s.
Here are the nominees:

Doug Wright Award

(presented for the best graphic novel book published in Canada (in English)
Hostage (Drawn & Quarterly)
Guy Delisle
I’m Not Here (Koyama Press)
GG
Crawl Space (Koyama Press)
Jesse Jacobs
The Abominable Mr. Seabrook (Drawn & Quarterly)
Joe Ollmann
Anti-Gone (Koyama Press)
Connor Willumsen

Spotlight Award (a.k.a. The Nipper)

presented to a Canadian cartoonist (or writer-cartoonist team) deserving of wider recognition

Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes
The Case of the Missing Men (Conundrum Press)
Gillian Blekkenhorst
All-Inclusive Fully Automated Vacation and House of Strays
Eric Kostiuk Williams
Condo Heartbreak Disco (Koyama Press)
Jason Loo
The Pitiful Human-Lizard Nos. 12, 13 and 14 (Chapterhouse Comics)
Jenn Woodall
Magical Beatdown Vol. 2 and Marie and Worrywart

Pigskin Peters Award

(experimental, unconventional, or avant-garde comic)

The Dead Father
Sami Alwani
The Death of the Master
Patrick Kyle
Crohl’s House Nos. 1 & 2
Alexander Laird, Jamiel Rahi and Robert Laird
Creation: The First Three Chapters
Sylvia Nickerson
Potluck
Wavering Line Collective

 
This year, the nominees were chosen from a long list of 100 books by a committee consisting of Adrian Doran, Alexander Hoffman, Betty Liang, and Conan Tobias.