The judges for this year’s Eisner Awards have just been announced, and it’s a seriously impressive group. The lineup includes industry heavyweights Tiffany Babb, Jerry Dear, Dr. Randy Duncan, Katie Pryde, and Regine Sawyer. You can check out their full bios below—but it’s also worth noting that this marks the first year of the Eisners under new administrator Laura Jones. Longtime admin (and absolute legend) Jackie Estrada isn’t going anywhere, though—she’ll be staying on as a consultant—so while things are clearly entering a new era, there’s still plenty of continuity.
As always, the judges were selected by Comic-Con’s awards subcommittee, which includes members of the board of directors, staff, and representatives from across different departments. The goal is to put together a panel that reflects the full breadth of the comics world, from creators and retailers to librarians, scholars, historians, and critics.
This group of judges will be responsible for choosing the nominees in roughly 30 Eisner Award categories. A separate panel handles the Eisner Hall of Fame selections. Once the nominations are announced, comics industry professionals will vote on the winners, which will then be revealed at the Eisner Awards ceremony during Comic-Con in July.
And the judges are:
Tiffany Babb writes and edits articles about comics, baseball, and pop culture. She is the editor of the comics criticism journal The Comics Courier and baseball website The Fan Files, and she has previously served as deputy editor at Popverse and as co-editor of the Eisner Award–winning PanelxPanel Magazine.
Jerry Dear works as a serials librarian at the San Francisco Public Library and also teaches the art of honing research skills at City College of San Francisco. A lifetime member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, he has served on and chaired literature award committees in the adult fiction, young adult, children’s, and picture book categories. He writes articles and reviews for library newsletters, The Horn Book Magazine, and the No Flying No Tights graphic novel review site, and he is also a contributor to the metadata community of practice for the youth literature Diverse BookFinder database.
Dr. Randy Duncan is distinguished professor emeritus at Henderson State University and former director of the Center for Comics Studies. He is co-author of the widely used textbook The Power of Comics and Graphic Novels: Culture, Form and Context (Bloomsbury 2009, 2015, 2023) and of Creating Comics as Journalism, Memoir and Nonfiction (Routledge 2015). He is co-editor of Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (Routledge 2011), The Secret Origins of Comics Studies (Routledge 2017), and More Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (Routledge 2019). Duncan is co-founder of the Comics Arts Conference, held each summer at Comic-Con, and is currently chief operating officer of Delphi Creative/Consulting LLC.
Katie Pryde owns Books with Pictures in Portland, Oregon, whose slogan is “Comics for Everyone.” Opened in 2016, Books with Pictures prides itself on its warm, kid-friendly space, curated inventory, strong ties to Portland’s comics creative community, and expert staff who can match any shopper with their next favorite read. She is also a partner in sister store Books with Pictures Eugene, established in 2020, and is on the board of ComicsPro, the trade organization for brick and mortar comic book stores. In 2022, Books with Pictures won the Will Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award.
Regine L Sawyer is a comic book writer, essayist, and editor working for companies such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Oni Press, Z2 Comics, Comic Book Resources, Time magazine, and more. She is also the coordinator and founder of the Women in Comics Collective International (WinC for short), an organization that supports women and gender expansive people of color working in the comic book and multimedia industries. From 2014 to 2016 Regine served as a Glyph Award judge and has been an adjudication moderator for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards (2022–2026). In addition, Regine, along with WinC, received the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award at the 2024 Eisner Awards Ceremony for their humanitarian work in the Comic Book industry.
