Comic-Con International has announced the panel of judges for the 2026 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. This year’s judges will be Tiffany Babb, Jerry Dear, Dr. Randy Duncan, Katie Pryde, and Regine L. Sawyer.

Babb writes and edits articles on comics, baseball, and pop culture, she is the editor of the comics criticism journal, The Comics Courier, and the baseball website, The Fan Files. She has also been the deputy editor of Popverse and co-editor of PanelxPanel Magazine.

Dear works at the San Francisco Public Library as a serials librarian and teaches research skills at the City College of San Francisco. He is a member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, has served on literature award committees, and writes articles and reviews for library newsletters, The Horn Book Magazine, and No Flying No Tights graphic novel site.

Duncan is a professor emeritus at Henderson State University and former director of the Center for Comics Studies. He is the co-author of The Power of Comics and Graphic Novels: Culture, Form and Context textbook and Creating Comics as Journalism, Memoir and Nonfiction. He is co-editor of Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods and similar critical books, he is the co-founder of the Comics Arts Conference, and COO of Delphi Creative/Consulting LLC.

Pryde is the owner of the Books with Pictures comic book store in Portland, Oregon. The shop opened in 2016, has the slogan “Comics for Everyone,” is kid-friendly, has a curated inventory, and ties to Portland’s comics community. She is a partner in Books with Pictures Eugene and is on the ComicsPro board.

Sawyer is a comic writer, essayist, and editor who has worked for DC, Marvel, Oni Press, Z2 Comics, Comic Book Resources, Time magazine, and other publications. She is the coordinator and founder of Women in Comics Collective International, an organization that supports women and gender expansive people of color working in comics. She was a Glyph Award judge from 2014 to 2016 and an adjudication moderator for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards from 2022 to 2026.

San Diego Comic-Con’s awards subcommittee selected the judges, with representatives from the board of directors, staff, and other departments. The judges are chosen to represent all of the comics industry that includes creators, retailers, academics/historians, and journalists. The judges will choose the nominees for the Eisner Awards in around 30 categories. Comics industry pros will then vote on the nominees and results will be announced at San Diego Comic-Con in July.