AVENGERS ACADEMY wins GLAAD AWARD!

Holy wow AVENGERS ACADEMY just won the GLAAD Award for OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK!

This comes as quite a surprise - the nature of the book's publication has always made me fear it would vanish into the ether, so having this pin put into history - to say "there was something here" - means a great deal to me. This book fought many battles, and it is a blessing to see that work recognized here. Thank you to all of you for supporting me week after week as I toiled away.

Here was my "acceptance speech" on social media:

I am so thankful for the gift of this recognition on behalf of myself and all of the crew on Avengers Academy. We strove week after week to make art worthy of our community – to deepen and enrich the world for queer, trans, and HIV+ representation and readership, to insist we belonged in these worlds of fiction and in the world that dreams them. We wanted both to illuminate queer stories told long ago and to trailblaze new paths forward. It was not always easy, but it was always worth it.

I am so proud of this work, and so honoured to have it so celebrated. Thank you.

Thank you to all the impossibly gifted collaborators on this project for all your brilliance, enthusiasm, and generosity: our regular artists Carola Borelli, Bailie Rosenlund, and Pablo Collar; our colorists KJ Diaz and Ruth Redmond; our letterists Ariana Maher and Joe Caramagna; as well as our numerous guest talents – who enriched this book week after week with their gifts and perspectives. Thanks too to our editors, Lindsey Cohick, Sidney Stubbs, Wil Moss, and founding editor and Sarah Brunstad who willed this book into life. Time and again this book redefined what could happen, how it could look and read, and above all who could be in a superhero comic, and I could not be prouder.

And, with great admiration and profoundest appreciation, thank you to my community, for always lifting me up. Finding all of you has been the great gift of my life. This category is full of the fellow artists who showed me there was a place for us to create and to live in this world, and I live in the enduring blessing of their work.

I said it when we ended, and I will say it here again: comics will mend your heart, if you let them. When I was a scared, lonely, closeted kid, the Marvel universe’s heroes were there for me when very little else was. That is a debt I can never pay back, but one I’ve tried with great travail to pay forward. I want to believe we have afforded a little of that same refuge to those who sought it. I hope you saw yourself; please know you were seen.

Til we all meet again (and I hope the chance is soon), may you find each other. May you find yourself. Remember that there’s always time – but waste no time. And what is broken is still beautiful.                 

                                    Above all, remember love. It is all that lasts.

Anthony Oliveira

@meakoopa