Considered the Oscars of the comics industry, the Eisner Award judges will meet in San Diego in April to pick the finalists that will vie for the top honor on July 20 at the gala ceremony presentation. Nominations can be submitted by the general public through the Comic-Con website beginning in January.

Nhora Lucía Serrano works as a professor of comparative literature at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She also serves as treasurer of the Comics Studies Society and on the MLA Executive Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives. She edited the anthology “Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis,” which will be published next year.

At Hamilton College, she recently received the Special Collections fellowship, allowing her to study the George Cruikshank collection and work by Gus Arriola’s Gordo. “She has always been passionate about the interplay between image and word in newspaper strips, editorial cartoons, and the book arts in the Anglophone world and Latin America,” said Comic-Con in a statement.

The other five judges are Candice Mack, manager of the Los Angeles Public Library; Graeme McMillan, pop culture writer at the Hollywood Reporter, Wired, and Playboy; Tate Ottati, who opened a comics store in Florida at the age of 17; Alexander Simmons, an award-winning freelance writer, comic book creator, and playwright; and William F. Wilson, a member of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization who has been a Comic-Con attendee since 1971.

Photo: Attendees of the London Comic-Con 2105 conference in the United Kingdom. (Credit: Pete Sheffield)