On August 11, 2022, The Harvey Awards announced that Spy x Family and Chainsaw Man have been nominated for the Best Manga Award this year.
Tatsuki Fujimoto's Chainsaw Man won the award last year and fans were delighted to hear that it will be contesting this year as well. The fact that Spy x Family by Tatsuya Endo has now been nominated for two consecutive years, is a testament to the manga’s top-tier content.
Here, we take a look at the rest of the nominees for the Best Manga category and understand a little bit more about the Harvey Awards.
The Harvey Awards: Chainsaw Man and Spy x Family
among the many titles contesting for the Best Manga Award
Apart from Chainsaw Man and Spy x Family, there are four other manga series that have been nominated for the Best Manga category. They are:
1) Blood On The Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi
2) Blue Lock by Muneyuki Maneshiro
3) Red Flowers by Yoshiharu Tsuge
4) Cat + Gamer by Wataru Nadatani
The winner of this category will be announced by the organization at the New York Comic Con, which will be taking place from October 6, 2022 to October 9, 2022.
Qualified industry professionals are now eligible to cast votes for their favorite manga. To apply as a voter, head to the official website of The Harvey Awards.
What are the Harvey Awards?
The Harvey Awards is one of the most well-known awards in the comics industry and acknowledges quality comic book titled. This award is named after popular comic book artist Harvey Kurtzman, who created Mad, which debuted in 1956.
The Harvey Awards is looked at as a continuation of the Kirby Awards, which were stopped in 1987. What many comic book artists love about The Harvey Awards is that the nomination committee is composed of unpaid volunteers who are comic book professionals.
Owing to the rise in popularity of manga and anime, the Harvey Awards introduced the Best Manga Award category in 2018. The first manga that won this prestigious award is My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, created by Kabi Nagata.
My Hero Academia took this award home in 2019 and the Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama won the award in 2020. Chainsaw Man won the award last year.
Prior to the creation of the Best Manga Award category, manga series were nominated alongside other comic books under the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category. Attack on Titan won the award in 2014.
Even though Showa: A History of Japan and One Punch Man were nominated for this award previously, they didn’t win. That being said, this category no longer exists and manga series enjoy a separate category all to themselves.