Offshore Lightning Manga Wins 2024 Ignatz Award
Drawn & Quarterly released Offshore Lightning in July 2023. The book includes Saitō's earlier works, as well as the stories "In Captivity" and "Solitary Death Building," which debuted in 2012 and 2015, respectively. An excerpt from Drawn & Quarterly's solicitation reads: Saito debuted as a manga creator in her 40s, winning Shogakukan's Big Comic Newcomer Award with her story "Dahlia" in 1987. She published "Solitary Death Building" ("Bocchi Shi no Yakata") in Shogakukan's Big Comic Original magazine in December 2017. The story was nominated in this year's 28th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.The Ignatz Awards, which are named after the character in George Herriman's seminal comic Krazy Kat, recognize "outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning." A jury of cartoonists create a ballot every year, and then the attendees of Small Press Expo vote on the nominees. This year's event was held on September 14-15 in Bethesda, Maryland.Glacier Bay Books' Glaeolia 2 collection of indie manga won the award for the "Outstanding Anthology" category at the 2021 Ignatz Awards.Source: Small Press Expo's website