The Harvey Awards are something that I can distinctly remember hearing about from time to time whenever a manga won an award there. I knew it was prestigious but I never thought about what the awards actually were. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a quick look at the Harvey Awards, a little bit about their history, the current categories and manga’s place at the awards.
The Harvey Awards were established in 1988 and are named after Harvey Kurtzman, one of the founders and editors of the magazine MAD along with a variety of other work. They were first held at Chicago Comicon and have gone through a variety of locations with their current being New York Comic Con. The Harvey Awards are presented for achievements in comic books and have covered a wide variety of categories such as Best New Series, Best Anthology and, what I would’ve known them for, Best American Edition of Foreign Material. However, these have since been reduced to six categories.
Understandably, the most prestigious category is the Book of the Year Award with notable winners being “Monstress”, “Hey Kiddo” and “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands”. Digital Book of the Year is awarded to webcomics and winners have included “Barrier”, “Check, Please!” and Lore Olympus. Best Adaptation from Comic Book/Graphic Novel is given to films or TV shows based on comics with winners including “Black Panther”, “WandaVision” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”.
Best Children’s or Young Adult Book is pretty self-explanatory although I do find the combination somewhat strange but books such as “The Tea Dragon Society”, “The Magic Fish” and, most amusingly to me, “Superman Smashes the Klan” have been awarded this category. Best Manga Title Award is, obviously, given to manga and winners have been “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness”, “Witch Hat Atelier” and “Chainsaw Man”. Finally, Best International Book Award seems to be given to titles which aren’t from either the US or Japan with examples being “Grass”, “Sweet Paprika” and “Blacksad: They All Fall Down Part 1”.
Given the importance of manga to this blog, I only thought it fair to highlight its representation at the Harvey Awards. It’s first worth noting that two mangaka are represented at the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame with those two being Osamu Tezuka and Rumiko Takahashi. Best American Edition of Foreign Material makes up the lion’s share of manga’s wins at the Harvey Awards, being given the award in 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1996 for “Akira”, 1997 for “Gon”, 2000 for “Star Wars: The Manga”, 2001-03 for “Lone Wolf & Cub”, 2005-06 for “Buddha”, 2007 for “Abandon the Old in Tokyo, 2010 for “The Art of Osamu Tezuka: The God of Manga” and 2014 for “Attack on Titan”. The only other time I’m aware of where a manga title won a Harvey Award beside Best American Edition of Foreign Material was in 2002 when Lone Wolf & Cub won Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work.
I hope you enjoyed this quick look at the Harvey Awards. Let me know your thoughts on the Harvey Awards, their history, the categories both being used currently and those that have been retired, manga’s relationship with the awards and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!