The 2025 Mini Comic Awards took place on May 1, 2025 at Nib & Ink Fest via livestream. You can see the ceremony here.
Nib & Ink Fest is a month-long online comics fest hosted by a cartoonist cooperative. The judges for the 2025 Mini Comic Awards were Barbara Benas, Ashanti Fortson, Gigi Murakami, Cam Marshall, Evan Derm, Alpad OK and Madeline McGrand.
“The Minicomic Awards is an annual virtual showcase founded by cartoonists Leslie Hung and Sloane Leong, which highlights unique, challenging, and unrecognized work in this short form of medium.”
Mini comics are short comics with less than 32 pages, original creations, and not part of a larger story. Over 300 submissions have been reduced to 30 finalists.
The ceremony states, “I feel that minicomics are cool because they are so short and easy to finish. It’s a great way to be experimental in different ways that allow you to express the medium, and it’s really cool to see what people put together.”
For most cartoonists, minicomics is a place where you begin to develop storytelling skills and go back to experimentation to promote techniques, voices, and even mediums. And their accessibility means gaining the bounty of incredibly unique works across a wide range of genres and from a variety of marginalized perspectives. The cartoonist cooperative is excited to continue to shine a spotlight on groundbreaking, under-radar work and encourage more people to make mini-comics!
Below are all winners with quotes from the judges.
2025 Mini Comic Award Winner – Fiction
Ratgrl Volume 2 – STC019
Judge Barbara Benas said, “(Ratgrl) Awards do everything they want in Spades. It’s a great, executed comic that experiments as the basis, but beyond that, it’s a great job on its own.
You can check it out here.
2025 Mini Comic Award Winner – Non-Fiction
Scoot – Cameron McCafatey
“More than a memoir. We witnessed the storytelling by artists, relive their memories with them as they told them, and we drift into an illustrated sensory fantasy sequence as we step out of the panel and explore emotional memories and events.” Judge Arpad said it was okay.
Check it out here.
2025 Mini Comic Award Winner – Horror
Pool – Leda Zawakki
“I’m trying to pull out copper etching so that we have a bigger place in the indie comic world. (The pool) is of really stunning and beautiful textures. It can use replicated textures and these different computer interface textures to convey this really weird and cascade. Personally, I was very impressed.
Read it here.
2025 Minicomic Award Winner – SF
Diaphanoids – Annabou & Hagaiparebusky
“The natural partial absorption through watercolor use and pages gives emotion. The colour represents the flawed consistency of raw reading authentic and authentic.
Check it out here.
2025 Minicomic Award Winner – Fantasy
Black Cassandra’s Ballad – Olivia Stevens
“A powerful and beautiful comic starts out as a metaphor, but because metaphor is a kind of kind in a story, it becomes a story of its own. Color is this palette of choice that is essential to reading. It’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful, sad and angry but gorgeous,” Judge Evan Derm said.
“I describe it as a modern folklore. I think it fits perfectly into the fantasy category. The pacing, the emotional lines, everything about it is great and stunning,” added Barbara Benas.
Read it here.
2025 Mini Comic Award Winner – Romance
Wisteria House – Daniela Visoso
“The layers of the story demand stills from non-existent shows. They are placed in a visually robust setting that shows readers dreaming of other episodes and conveys the beauty of nonexistent novels, and are spoken as nonexistent fan comics.” Judge Arpad said it’s okay.
Get a copy here.
2025 Mini Comic Award Winner – Humor
Sadly – Sajan Rai
“Treating Shakespeare as just a type of man is essentially an innovation in my generation of minds, a hilarious, perfectly executed comic. The visual texture is so beautiful without any distractions. I love this comic!” Judge Evan Derm said.
This is Rai’s website.
Congratulations to all finalists and winners! Thank you to all of the people in the cartoonist cooperative for all of your work.
Also, don’t forget that a pen tip and ink fest is ongoing in May. Check out the event here.
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