Saga Cleans Up at the 2016 Harvey Awards

On Sunday, September 4th, the 2016 Harvey Awards were announced during the Baltimore Comic Con. Harvey Kurtzman was an important figure in comics history and is best known for his contributions to Mad Magazine. The Harvey Awards, named after him, began in 1988. Brian K. Vaughan was a big winner this year. He was honored for two of his series, Saga and Paper Girls. Saga in particular had a good night overall, as it won many of the top awards.     Saga is no stranger to awards, but it shows no sign of slowing down, now in its fourth year. At the 2016 Harvey Awards, Saga won Best Writer (Vaughan), Best Artist (Fiona Staples), Best Cover Artist (Staples) and Best Continuing or Limited Series. That is a sweep of the biggest awards. As a comparison, it is like a movie winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Director. Also, Vaughan won a Harvey Award for Best New Series, which went to Paper Girls, his Image Comics series with artist Cliff Chiang.   Some of the other notable awards winners were Laura Allred (Best Colorist for Silver Surfer), Klaus Janson (Best Inker for Dark Knight III: The Master Race), John Workman (Best Letterer for Ragnarok), Mike Norton (Best Online Comic for Battlepug), Tom King (Most Promising New Talent for The Vision), and Chip Zdarsky (Special Award for Humor Comics for Howard the Duck). Additionally, Stan Sakai won Best Cartoonist for Usagi Yojimbo. The Hall of Fame Award went to Carl Banks and Al Jaffe. Overall, there were numerous other comics creators who received 2016 Harvey Awards, and the full list can be found here.     Vivek Tiwary, the writer of the Harvey Award-winning graphic novel The Fifth Beatle, hosted the 2016 Harvey Awards. Dean Haspiel, artist for Archie Comics’ The Fox was the keynote speaker. Some of the presenters were Amy Chu, Katie Cooke, Denis Kitchen, Hope Larson, Paul Levitz, Terry Moore, Louise Simonson, Walter Simonson, and Mark Waid. The Harvey Awards are present annually at the Baltimore Comic Con. They are, along with the Eisner Award, considered one of the top honors in comic books.