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Ignatz Awards

The Ignatz Award is named for the brick-wielding mouse in George Herriman's Krazy Kat comic strip, and is intended to recognize outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning by small press creators or creator-owned projects published by larger publishers. Winners are determined by the votes of the attendees of the Small Press Expo, a weekend-long convention and tradeshow showcasing creator-owned comics.

Award known as: Ignatzes
First year of award: 1997
Award status: Active
Awarded at: Small Press Expo
Number of categories: 9 (Current); 8 (Historical)
Hall of Fame: No
Award for children's material: No
Type of Award: Nominated, Festival
Nominations by: Five-member judging panel consisting of comic book professionals. (None of them know until afterward who the others are, and none may vote for his own work; a two-pass nominating system determines the final ballot, which lists five nominees per category unless there is a tie in the final nomination vote, in which case there may be more.)
Voting open to: All attendees of the Small Press Expo
Official web page: www.spxpo.com/ignatz.shtml

Category Notes

• To be eligible, a book must have been published or a web comic must have been published on the Web between July 1 of the previous year and June 30 of the current year.
• The "Outstanding Anthology or Collection" category includes both anthologies of stories by various creators and collections of stories from a single series that have not previously been collected.
• "Graphic novels" are distinguished from individual comics by being generally over 48 pages and are usually case or perfect bound.
• A "minicomic" is defined by the award guidelines as a comic that is not professionally published; they are usually photocopied, hand-stapled, and self-distributed.
• "Online comics" can include an individual comic, a continuing storyline comic, and strips, and must be published on the web before appearing in print.
• The "Outstanding Debut Comic" award is given to a comic that premieres at that year's Small Press Expo. It is the only category that is not nominated by the jury; rather, creators nominate themselves by notifying the awards committee at least a month in advance of the Small Press Expo.