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Shintaro Kago's 'Blood Harvest' Short Story Manga Wins Eisner Award

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards announced the winners of this year's awards on Friday evening during San Diego Comic-Con 2026. Sanho's Purgatory Funeral Cakes won the Best U.S. Edition of International Material–Asia award. Dark Horse Comics published the work and Danny Lim translated the work.

The other nominees for the award this year were:

• Keigo Shinzō's Hirayasumi (translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash)
• Kazumi Yamashita's Land (translated by Kevin Gifford)
• Keigo Shinzō's Tokyo Alien Bros. (translated by Casey Loe)
• Chang Sheng's Yan comic (translated by Vanessa Liu)

Shintaro Kago's "Blood Harvest" from the Brain Damage book (translated by Zack Davisson) that collects Kago's short manga won the Best Short Story award. The author's "The Curse Room" short story from the same book was also nominated.

Kodansha USA's hardcover release of volumes 1-5 of Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Akira manga (edited by Haruko Hashimoto, Ajani Oloye, and Lauren Scanlan) won the award for Best Archival/Collection Project.

Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 by Andrea Horbinski won the award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work.

Kazumi Yamashita earned a separate nomination for Best Writer/Artist for the first volume of the Land manga, but Jamal Campbell's Zatanna won the award.

Anime director Rintarō's My Life in 24 Frames per Second manga was nominated for Best Graphic Memoir, but George Takei, Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger's It Rhymes with Takei won the award.

The Art of Manga (designed by Tessa Lee) and Fruits Basket: The Complete Box Set (Collector's Edition #13) (designed by Wendy Chan) were nominated for Best Publication Design, but Shawn Dahl with Chip Kidd won the award for The Essential Peanuts.

Viz Media's release of hakei's DeadAss was nominated for Best Digital Comic, but Tony Cliff's Practical Defense Against Piracy won the award.

Manga creator Gō Nagai was inducted to the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame this year. The awards announced on Friday morning that Akira Toriyama was also inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Taiyo Matsumoto's Tokyo These Days manga (translated by Michael Arias) won last year's award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia. The awards last year inducted both Shigeru Mizuki and Junji Ito into the Hall of Fame.

Source: The Beat (Samantha Puc)