The nominees for the 2026 NAACP Awards have been announced, and for the third year in a row, graphic novels have their own separate category. Here’s a look at this year’s nominees.
They Choose Violence, by Sheldon Allen and Mauricio Campatella, is a vigilante story about three college friends who target white supremacists who have gone unpunished after killing Black people. Their crusade draws attention to the cause, but things take an unexpected turn when a copycat killer emerges and the violence escalates. Billed as a thought-provoking story about power and justice, as well as an action-filled revenge tale, They Choose Violence was published by AWA as a five-issue limited series in 2025 and as a trade collection on January 6, 2026.
Parable of the Talents is Damien Duffy, John Jennings, and David Brame’s graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s dystopian story about life in a Christian fundamentalist society. The novel is a sequel to Parable of the Sower; Duffy and Jennings’ graphic adaptation of that book won a Hugo Award, and their adaptation of Butler’s Kindred won an Eisner. The publisher is Megascope, the Abrams imprint helmed by Jennings (see “Abrams ComicArts Adds New Imprint”).
Defiant: The Story of Robert Smalls, by Rob Edwards, is a look at the life of the Civil War hero, an enslaved man who commandeered a Confederate ship and turned it over to the Union, became a captain in the Union navy, and later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Publisher Stranger Comics is an indy house that also publishes the Niobe: She Is Life series; the graphic novel is also a project of Legion M, which is crowdfunding a film about Smalls.
Two of the nominees are middle-grade graphic novels:
Creaky Acres, by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder, is a middle-grade “horse girl” story about a talented, disciplined rider whose world is upended when she moves to a looser stable with an enthusiastic but unconventional group of riders. Brill is Editorial Director of First Second and 23rd Street Books (see “First Second Launches Sister Imprint”) and Magruder is the creator of the webcomic M.F.K., which won the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award and was published in print by Insight Comics (see “Review: ‘M.K.K.’ HC”). The graphic novel is rated for ages 8-12 and published by the Penguin Random House imprint Kokila.
One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia and Sharee Miller, is a graphic adaptation of the prose novel by Williams-Garcia, which was a Newbery Honor book and a Coretta Scott King Award winner and was nominated for a National Book Award. It’s published by the HarperCollins imprint Quill Tree Books (which also published Jerry Craft’s New Kid books and ND Stevenson’s Nimona) and is rated for ages 8-12.Source: ICv2
