Miss Cellany’s Monday: Four Bits
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2026 Lucy Caswell Research Award winners, the art of Peanuts by painter Tom Everhart, finalists in the new science fiction Nebula Award comics category, and a new James Bond comic strip collection (again).
Billy Ireland 2026 Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award Winners: Dr. Standford Carpenter and Sebastian Martinez!
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum has announced the recipients of the Lucy Caswell grants to assist in researching comics in their areas of interest:
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (BICLM) is pleased to announce the winners of the annual Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award for 2026. The award is named for Professor Emerita Lucy Shelton Caswell, the founding curator of BICLM, and provides $2500 to support researchers who need to travel to Columbus, Ohio to use the BICLM collections materials on site.
Dr. Stanford W. Carpenter is a cultural anthropologist, comic creator, and former archaeologist…
He is the academic liaison for Comicpalooza and founder of Comicpalooza University (CPU); sits on the advisory board of Abrams ComicArts Megascope imprint; and is a co-founder and former chairman of the Black & Brown Comix Arts Festival (BCAF). Dr. Carpenter will use the Lucy Shelton Caswell Research award to research contemporary notions of afrofuturism, the ethnogothic/conjure culture, colonial counter narratives, and heroism as they relate to Black Press comic strips; Black comic creators; and Black creative communities from the Civil Rights and Pre Civil Rights Eras…
Sebastian Martinez is from El Paso, Texas and is currently working on obtaining a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from The University of Texas at El Paso…
Martinez will use the Lucy Shelton Caswell Research award to analyze novelty product advertisements in 1960’s and 70’s comic books from a sociological and visual rhetorical perspective, interpreting what these advertisements reveal about the sociocultural climate at the time of their circulation. Martinez intends to examine how these product advertisements helped construct Cold War ideologies, gender norms, and popular conceptions about childhood through the visual medium of comics.
Tom Everhart, Sparky, and Snoopy Make for a Fine Art Friendship
Painter Tom Everhart discusses his friendship with Charles M. Schulz as an exhibit of Everhart’s paintings go on display with an emphasis on the paintings of the Peanuts gang.
Bob Ruggiero at Houston Press reviews the exhibit and interviews Tom Everhart about his Schulz connection:
You could say that painter Tom Everhart has peanuts on the brain. Or, actually, Peanuts. That’s because for the past three-plus decades the main subject for hundreds of his artworks are the beloved characters from the long-running comic strip. Some that evolved out of a partnership and friendship with their late creator Charles Schulz himself.
He would approach Schulz about incorporating the characters into his own paintings. The cartoonist agreed, but with one caveat: The art had to include Everhart’s own personal stamp on every piece. So, he starts each painting with something that he wants to say in his mind and often titles his work with a jarring-but-descriptive phrase.
“It had to take what he did to a different place. It had to be my way of seeing things,”
Recent Works: The Art of Tom Everhart at Off the Wall Gallery runs March 24 to April 24 in Houston, TX.
Nebula Award Finalists for SFWA’s 61st Annual Awards
75 years after Ray Bradbury‘s works began being adapted for comics at EC Publications and nearly 100 years after Buck Rogers initiated a flood of science fiction strips to the “funny pages,” the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has finally added a comics category to their Nebula Awards.
This year, SFWA celebrates two inaugural awards: one for Best Poem, and one for Best Comic.
The finalists for The Nebula Award for Best Comic:
Second Shift, by Kit Anderson (Avery Hill)
Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal, by Amy Chu (Berger)
Helen of Wyndhorn, by Tom King (Dark Horse)
Fishflies, by Jeff Lemire (Image)
Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters: The Killing Stone, by Jessica Maison (Wicked Tree)
Strange Bedfellows, by Ariel Slamet Ries (HarperAlley)
The Flip Side, by Jason Walz (Rocky Pond)
The Stoneshore Register, by G. Willow Wilson (Berger)
No, Dan Schkade for Flash Gordon is not among the finalists.
But there is some controversy as Christopher Chiu-Tabet at The Beat explains:
Now before we proceed to list the nominees for Best Comic, it should be noted that the awards are organized by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), and as such, only the books’ writers and publishers are listed in the press release.
Yes, it’s a comics award that doesn’t recognize a large part of what makes comics comics!
Ian Fleming’s James Bond Signature Comic Strip Collection Vol. 1
For those of us who missed the James Bond comic strip collections of the Titan Comics series in various editions from 1987-1990 or 2004-2010 or 2009-2014 or 2015-2017, we now have a new opportunity to get the John McLusky-drawn comic strip in book form.
Often imitated but never bettered, this classic collection includes the first three years of James Bond newspaper strips from July 1958 till May 61 and includes full-length stories of Casino Royal, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia, with Love, Dr. No and Goldfinger.
Nicole Drum and ComicBook.com present an exclusive first look (but no cover) of the new collection:
This fall, Titan Comics is publishing Ian Fleming’s James Bond Signature Comic Strip Collection Vol. 1, a brand-new book bringing together the first seven feature-length James Bond newspaper comic-strip adventures — stories that helped in spire the James Bond cinematic universe. The collection, by acclaimed artist John McLusky, collects Ian Fleming’s earliest literary adventures just in comic strip form — and ComicBook has an exclusive first look at the volume, coming out September 8th.
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