This is always an exciting time for everyone involved in the British Comic Awards because after many, many months of planning, reading, more reading and even more reading we can finally reveal our nominees. Selected from the Longlist of titles provided by the reading public, publishers and the creators themselves, these titles and creators represent the very best, and indeed the diversity, of British comics produced in the last year.

We proudly present the 2014/15 Shortlist for the British Comic Awards in association with Page 45.

And the nominees are:

Best Comic

• Beast Wagon – Owen Michael Johnson, John Pearson and Colin Bell (Self published)
• Grey Area: From the City to the Sea – Tim Bird (Avery Hill Publishing)
• Hand Me Down – Kristyna Baczynski (Self published)
• Lost Property – Andy Poyiadgi (Nobrow)
• Strip – Sarah Gordon (Self published)

Best Book

• Comic Book Slumber Party: Fairytales for Bad Bitches – Hannah Chapman (Editor); Stephanie Ayres, Sarah Burgess, Emma Carlisle, Lucie Ebrey, Enoki, Lize Meddings, Becca Tobin, Donya Todd, Alice Urbino and Jenn Woodall (Self published)
• Supercrash: How to Hijack the Global Economy – Darryl Cunningham (Myriad Editions)
• The Motherless Oven – Rob Davis (SelfMadeHero)
• The Rabbit – Rachael Smith (Avery Hill Publishing)
• Tim Ginger – Julian Hanshaw (Top Shelf)

 

Young People’s Comic Award

• Cindy and Biscuit Vol 1: We Love Trouble – Dan White (Self published/Milk the Cat Comics)
• Gary’s Garden Book 1 – Gary Northfield (David Fickling Books)
• Ghost Cat’s Pedigree Chums – Craig Conlan (Self published)
• Maleficium – EdieOP (Avery Hill Publishing)
• Star Cat Book 01 – James Turner (David Fickling Books)

 

Emerging Talent

• Sarah Graley (Our Super Adventure, Pizza Witch, Rent Quest)
• Rachael Stott (Doctor Who: The 9th Doctor #3, Star Trek #46 and #47, Star Trek/Planet of the Apes #1-5)
• Matt Taylor (The Great Salt Lake, Wolf #1 and #2)
• Adam Vian (Long Lost Lempi, Snippets: Extracts from 4 comics that don’t Exist)
• Christian Ward (ODY-C Volume 1, ODY-C #6)

Hall of Fame

The fourth entrant to the BCA Hall of Fame will be Scottish comics legend and creator of Desperate Dan, Oor Wullie and The Broons, Dudley D. Watkins.

You can view every eligible title submitted for this year’s awards on the BCA Longlist 2014/15.

We can also reveal our Judging Panel for this year, who will decide the winner for each category (except the Young People’s Comic Award which is chosen by young reading groups from around the UK). They are:

• Eddie Argos (Lead singer of Art Brut, painter and comic writer)
• Kate Beaton (Award-winning Canadian cartoonist)
• Jonathan Entwistle (Film director)
• Stephen L Holland (Co-owner of esteemed comic shop Page 45).
• Scroobius Pip (Spoken word & hip hop artist and podcaster)

The 4th Annual British Comic Awards Ceremony will take place at 6pm on Friday 13th November in The Carriageworks’ Millennium Room in Central Leeds. This will be one of the opening night events for the Thought Bubble Festival’s Comic Con Weekend, the biggest and best celebration of sequential art in the UK.

Congratulations to all our nominees and we wish them the very best of luck.