The 2022 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards were presented during a live and virtual event on the evening of Saturday, October 29, 2022.
Mike Wieringo Spirit Award
Fan Favorites Winners
- Favorite Hero: Sylas from Syphon, Image Comics
- Favorite Villain: Captain Martell from Blowback, self-published
- Favorite New Series: Clinic of Horrors, WEBTOON
- Favorite New Talent: Vincent Kings
- Favorite Publisher: Image Comics
Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
- Jeff Lemire – Winner
- Sas Milledge
- Eric Powell
- Caytlin Vilbrandt
- Thom Zahler
Best Writer
- Jeff Lemire
- Merryweather
- Chris Miskiewicz
- Tom Taylor
- James Tynion IV – Winner
Best Artist or Penciller
- Filipe Andrade – Winner
- Juan Cavia
- Tyler Crook
- Jeff Edwards
- Jock
- PokuriMio
- Gabriel Rodriguez
Best Inker
- Sal Buscema – Winner
- Adelso Corona
- Eber Ferreira
- Jonathan Glapion
- Sandra Hope
- Mark Morales
- Norm Rapmund
Best Letterer
- Andworld Design
- Clayton Cowles
- Crank!
- Taylor Esposito – Winner
- DC Hopkins
- Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Best Colorist
- Juan Cavia
- Bruna Costa
- Dijjo Lima
- Dave McCaig – Winner
- K. O’Neill
- Sandro Pacucci
- Santiago R. Villa
Best Cover Artist
- Simone Di Meo – Winner
- Jeff Edwards
- Stephanie Hans
- Javan Jordan
- Jeff Lemire
- Peach Momoko
- Sana Takeda
Best Series
- Locke & Key/The Sandman Universe: Hell & Gone, IDW Publishing
- Many Deaths of Laila Starr, BOOM! Studios
- Something is Killing the Children, BOOM! Studios – Winner
- Stray Dogs, Image Comics
- Syphon, Image Comics
Best Single Issue or Story
- Commander RAO #1, Scout Comics
- Mamo #1, BOOM! Studios
- The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #3, BOOM! Studios
- Something is Killing the Children #20, BOOM! Studios – Winner
- Tales of the Night Watchman: Under the Surface, So What? Press
Best Original Graphic Novel
- Ballad for Sophie, Top Shelf Productions
- Blowback, self-published
- Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?, Albatross Funnybooks – Winner
- Djeliya, TKO Studios
- Save it for Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest, Abrams Books
- This is Where We Fall, Z2
Best Anthology
- DC Pride 2021, DC – Winner
- SENSORY: Life on the Spectrum, self-published
- Smut Peddler Presents: Sordid Past, Iron Circus Comics
- You Died: An Anthology of the Afterlife, Iron Circus Comics
- Yule: Dreadful Tales for the Holiday Season, self-published
Best Humor Comic
- Cyclopedia Exotica, Drawn & Quarterly
- Love and Capes: In the Time of Covid, Maerkle Press
- Not All Robots, AWA Studios – Winner
- Twiztid Haunted High-Ons: Curse of the Green Book, Source Point Press
- Wicked Things, BOOM! Studios
Best Webcomic
- Archie Comics: Big Ethel Energy, WEBTOON
- Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, WEBTOON
- I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp, Insider
- Let’s Play, WEBTOON
- Lore Olympus, WEBTOON – Winner
Best Humor Webcomic
- The Little Trashmaid, Tapas Media
- Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell, WEBTOON
- The Middle Age, middleagecomic.com
- Mr. Lovenstein, Tapas Media
- Rosebuds, GoComics
- Sarah’s Scribbles, Tapas Media – Winner
Best Non-fiction Comic Work
- The Comic Book History of Animation, IDW Publishing
- Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?, Albatross Funnybooks – Winner
- Elvis: The Official Graphic Novel, Z2
- Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey, Graphic Mundi
- Run: Book One, Abrams Books
- Yummy: A History of Desserts, Random House Children’s Books
Best Kids Comic or Graphic Novel
- Avatar: The Last Airbender–Suki, Alone. Dark Horse Comics – Winner
- Better Place, Top Shelf Productions
- Just Roll With It, Random House Children’s Books
- Nobody Likes You, Greta Grump, Fantagraphics
- Rainbow Bridge, AfterShock Comics
- The Underfoot: Into the Sun, Oni Press
Best Presentation in Design
- Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?, Albatross Funnybooks – Winner
- EC Covers Artist’s Edition, IDW Publishing
- Friday Foster: The Ultimate Collection, ABLAZE Comics
- Jim Lee’s X-Men Artist’s Edition, IDW Publishing
- Locke & Key: Keyhouse Compendium, IDW Publishing
- Stake, Scout Comics
The 2022 Ringo Awards Professional Jury...

JIM CALAFIORE
In 30-plus years working in comics, Jim Calafiore has worked on Peter David’s Aquaman, Judd Winnick’s Exiles, Gotham Underground with Frank Tieri, Red Lanterns with Charles Soule, various Batman books, Deadpool, and Black Panther. After a run on the critically-acclaimed Secret Six with Gail Simone, they reunited with for their creator-owned success Leaving Megalopolis. He’s currently working on his creator-owned supernatural-comedy saga, NED, Lord of the Pit.

CARLA SPEED MCNEIL
Finder, the science fiction series Carla Speed McNeil started in 1996, was “born” in Maryland, and so were her two kids and three cats. She and her husband were born and raised in Louisiana, but we’ve lived here longer than we ever lived there, which is a funny thought sometimes. She’s won an Eisner, several Ignatzes, and the LA Times Book Prize. She teaches comics at MICA in Baltimore, and her COVID hobb-session is making teeny tiny doors.

JARRETT MELENDEZ
Jarrett Melendez grew up on the mean, deer-infested streets of Bucksport, Maine. A longtime fan of food and cooking, Jarrett has spent a lot of his time in kitchens, oftentimes as a paid professional! Jarrett is a regular contributor to Bon Appetit and Food52, and is the author of The Comic Kitchen, a fully illustrated, comic-style cookbook. When not cooking and writing about food, Jarrett usually writes comic books and graphic novels, including Chef’s Kiss from Oni Press, and has contributed to the Ringo-nominated All We Ever Wanted, Full Bleed, and Murder Hobo: Chaotic Neutral. He is currently writing a graphic memoir for Oni Press. Jarrett lives in Somerville, MA, with his collection of Monokuro Boo plush pigs.

JOE MURRAY
Joe Murray’s auspicious introduction to the world of comics was through the inauspicious Marvel toy tie-in comics of ROM, Micronauts, and Shogun Warriors, but they were enough to get him hooked. After earning a degree in English Literature and the job prospects that opened up (at graduation he was given a diploma and told he could never afford to turn down a free meal), he inveigled his way into a job at his Local Comic Shop, Captain Blue Hen Comics in Newark, Delaware. Within two years, he was running the place. In 2001, after picking the brains of the wisest and brightest in comic retailerdom, Joe and his wife Danielle decided to buy the business. Captain Blue Hen is a three-time Eisner Spirit of Retailing finalist, a seven-time Readers’ Choice Best Comic Shop winner, and celebrated its 40th anniversary overall and 20th anniversary under Joe and Danielle’s stewardship in 2021.
A member of ComicsPro, the only trade organization for direct-market comic book retailers, Joe was elected to the Board of Directors in 2019 and became Vice President in 2021. Joe works with a multitude of schools and libraries in several states. He has been a speaker at the Delaware and Maryland Librarians conference, a workshop speaker at Diamond Summits and New York Comic-con, and is a regular guest speaker at the University of Delaware for graduate study courses in Library Sciences.

QIANA WHITTED
Qiana Whitted is professor of English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina. A graduate of Hampton University with a PhD from Yale University, her research and teaching focus on Black literary and cultural studies, and American comics and graphic novels. She is the author of the Eisner Award-winning book, EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest, and co-editor of the collection on Comics and the U.S. South. She also wrote the introductory essay for the Black Panther volume of the new Penguin Classics Marvel Collection and is currently editing a collection on blackness in early American comics. She is the editor of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society and chair of the International Comic Arts Forum.
Cartoonist Jamar Nicholas delivers 2022 Ringo Awards Keynote Address
Jamar Nicholas is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based artist and educator, dedicating his career to helping young people realize the power of visual narrative.
Beginning his cartooning career in self-publishing, 1998’s The Jamar Chronicles #1 (Sweatshop Press) began Jamar’s foray into comics.
In a world before Google, Jamar and a few friends created the Indy Cred All-Stars, an online Yahoo! message board that was a community of DIY-ers trying to figure out the Riddle of Comics. This became a haven in the early years of several cartoonists that have gone on to great things in the industry.
From there, he ventured into early webcomics with The Jamar Chronicles Weekly and in 2002, created Detective Boogaloo: Hip-Hop Cop, distributed on filmmaker Kevin Smith’s Moviepoopshoot.com. During that time, he entered into the comics space with a short stint on Image/Devil’s Due’s Radiskull & Devildoll, based off of the popular web cartoon series created by Joe Sparks.
A career-altering job illustrating Annie Auerbach’s The Grosse Adventures at Tokyopop led Jamar to discover the love of creating stories for young people.
In 2010, Jamar adapted and illustrated Geoffrey Canada’s Fist Stick Knife Gun, a story about escaping inner-city violence. The Graphic Novel space was a lot different then, even if it was ONLY 12 years ago. Winning several GLYPH Awards for the project, Jamar began a strong focus on creating long-form comic work.
Everything old is new again — in 2015, Jamar brought Detective Boogaloo: Hip-Hop Cop to the newspapers, in full-color and serialized daily in the US Metro news service (Philadelphia, NYC, and Boston), where he had an estimated 3 million readers a month.
2017 brought Leon: Protector of the Playground (Kids Love Comics), which was received with critical acclaim and more accolades, including the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in 2018.
Jamar’s latest book, Leon the Extraordinary, releases on October 4th. The first in an all-new series from Scholastic Graphix, Leon the Extraordinary tells the story of an ordinary kid trying to make a difference and save the day in a world full of superheroes.
He is also a writer and columnist for DRAW! Magazine, as well as co-host of the Pencil To Pencil Podcast with industry legends Mike Manley and Steve Conley.
“I am over-the-moon thrilled to be the 2022 keynote presenter for the Ringo Awards. Mike [Wieringo] meant the world to me–and I know I share that with the comics community–that his loss is still felt. How fitting that my friend, this kind soul who embodied, to me, what a professional comics artist could be, infused joy, wonder and the love of the artform into every project he touched–has us gathering again to celebrate that in this years’ award nominees. I’m honored to be part of the ceremony.”
“Besides being a friend of the show, Jamar was a friend of Mike Wieringo,” said Marc Nathan, Baltimore Comic-Con promoter. “Jamar is really having his moment right now with Scholastic backing his Leon character, and beyond all of that, he’s a great friend and proponent of the comics industry. We are very much looking forward to hearing Jamar’s keynote address this year.”