All throughout July we’re crowdsourcing an Extra Eisners Reading List from comics journalists and critics. Each weekday throughout the month, we’ll post a new pick we would have liked to have seen nominated for an Eisner. There are so many great comics, it’s impossible for the Eisners to recognize them all. This list is to honor and diversify the pool of work praised by the industry.

Today’s pick comes from Tom Shapira…enjoy!

My one holdup when nominating Michel Fiffe for the Extra Eisner project is that the dude must have shelf-full of Eisner anyway, and he doesn’t really need another (even fictional) one. Imagine my surprise (shock! Terror!) when I discovered Fiffe’s shelves are quite safe from the threat of Eisner trophy damages: he was given the prize not once!

This would be galling enough, seeing as how his Copra manages the rare one-two punch of attracting both the alternative highbrow aficionados (for his imaginative designs, incredible grasp of flow on the page and bold experimentation) and the cape-crowd (for his strong character work and faithful evocation of 1980’s action-adventure comics).  In 2020 not to see his name on the ballot is especially bizarre. He started 2019 strong, with the G.I.Joe miniseries Sierra Muerte (which packed a lot punch for its short runtime) and ended it stronger with Copra going to Image Comics.

The Image relaunch brought a ton of publicity, but after all that hurrah it’s nice to see that Copra is still as good as it ever was: the action is still banging, the art is still spectacular in ways that make you ask “how did he do that? How did he even think that?”; but, more than everything else, it’s the story and the characters that make Copra work. When they get hurt you get hurt with them, when they are betrayed we feel betrayed, when they are angry we want some asshole to get his fill of hot lead. Wrap it all in long-term storytelling slowly building up threats and complication and you’ve got a series as good as any from the golden age of team books – JLI, Suicide Squad, X-Men. Michel Fiffe can make you forget you see blots of color on a page – and make you see people. -Tom Shapira

Tom Shapira is the writer of The Lawman from PanelxPanel, with bylines via Shelfdust, Sequart, and The Comics Journal.

Michel Fiffe is the writer/artist creator of Copra, Zegas, and Panorama. You can learn more about his work via his website.

Visit the full Extra Eisners Reading List!

Check out the official Eisner Nominations for 2020.