The National Cartoonists Society has announced the nominees for their Cartoonist of the Year Award for 2020; the award is more familiarly known as The Reuben Award.
Alphabetically…
Ray Billingsley would be the first African American to win The Reuben.
Bill Griffith would be the first underground cartoonist to win The Reuben.
Terri Libenson would be the first solely kid’s book author to win The Reuben.
Hilary B. Price would be the first Hilary to win The Reuben.
Mark Tatulli would be the first Mark to win The Reuben.
Okay, I ran out of steam with those last two.
This makes Hilary’s 8th nomination and Mark’s 7th, both having been nominated almost every year since 2013 (Mark skipped 2014). This is Terri’s 3rd nomination. Ray and Bill are newbies to The Big One. All are syndicated comic strip/panel cartoonists; using the past tense in Terri’s case (though her comic strip did last four days into 2020).
Good luck to all of them!
What’s your definition of “underground”? One could argue that last year’s winner, Lynda Barry, is an underground cartoonist.
I’m using underground as the comix books from the late 60s to the mid 70s. I agree that Lynda’s Ernie Pook’s Comeek from student papers of 1979, and then the later “alternative” newspapers, could be considered underground – though not in my old mind,
Having lived through them the underground comix and newspapers are a different breed from the the alternatives that evolved from the ugs.