Jewish Comics Experience Announces New Trina Robbins Award for Career Achievement

The Jewish Comics Experience (JewCE) is proud to announce that the Trina Robbins Award for Career Achievement will be presented this year at the prestigious JewCE Awards. The awards ceremony will take place at the Center for Jewish History on November 10th at 6:30 PM.

The award honors Trina Robbins, who passed away earlier this year. Robbins was  a famed cartoonist and comics ‘herstorian’ who wrote graphic novels, books, and comics, many of them with Jewish subjects, for over half a century. Her subjects ranged from the Eisner Award-nominated A Minyen Yidn, her adaptation of her father’s Yiddish book, to her graphic biography of Holocaust survivor Lily Renée, to her own Jewish teenage superheroine, GoGirl! She won multiple Eisner Awards and was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Wizard World Hall of Legends in 2017.

Casey Robbins, reflecting on her mother’s legacy, said, “My mother would have been honored to have the Trina Robbins Award for Career Achievement named after her. She was always proud of her New York Jewish heritage, and enjoyed helping others achieve their full potential.”

The JewCE Awards are dedicated to recognizing exceptional contributions from artists, storytellers, and creators who have enriched Jewish storytelling through the dynamic medium of comics. Robbins was last year’s winner for career achievement.

This year’s JewCE Awards will be chaired by CNN pop culture historian and critic Roy Schwartz, author of Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero and JewCE co-curator.

“From underground “comix” to mainstream superheroes, Trina Robbins made comics more inclusive for women, pioneered Jewish representation, earned recognition for overlooked female cartoonists, and advocated for social issues,” said Schwartz.

The judges for this year’s JewCE Awards are Paul Levitz, Jenny Caplan, Danny Fingeroth, Roy Schwartz, Samantha Baskind, Jeremy Dauber, Brian Michael Bendis, Karen Green, Barry Deutsch, and Rutu Modan.

The awards promise to be a night of triumph and celebration of Jewish narrative art. The ceremony will offer attendees the opportunity to meet the creative forces behind this year’s nominated works, dive into their creative universes, and witness the crowning of this year’s comic champions.