Akira Toriyama Joins Eisner Hall of Fame as Manga Scores Big

Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Hall of Fame on July 24 at the event hosted at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. Manga artist Shintaro Kago also earned the award for Best Short Story for Blood Harvest. 

Toriyama was one of the 16 nominees for the Eisner Hall of Fame, released in February 2026. He was inducted alongside Chris Ware, Colleen Doran, and Jeff Smith. 

The Dragon Ball creator was previously nominated for the honor in 2019, along with Naoki Urasawa. A separate judges’ panel had already pre-selected manga creator Gō Nagai, whose credits include Devilman and Mazinger Z, for the Hall of Fame in January.

Manga Footprint in Eisners Awards 2026

Often described as the comic industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards recognize excellence in graphic storytelling across comics and graphic novels published in English. In the Eisner Awards 2026, manga appeared across Best Short Story, Best Graphic Memoir, Best Writer/Artist, Best Archival Collection, and the dedicated Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Asia categories.

Shintaro Kago’s short story Blood Harvest is part of his short story collection Brain Damage, which was translated by Zack Davisson. Kago’s The Curse Room from the same collection was also nominated in this category.

Meanwhile, Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA won in the Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books category, outperforming five other nominees in the segment. Andrea Horbinski’s Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 received the Best Academic/Scholarly Work award, highlighting manga's growing recognition beyond fiction. 

Other notable Japanese contenders included Keigo Shinzō's Hirayasumi and Tokyo Alien Bros., as well as Kazumi Yamashita’s Land, all of which were nominated for Best U.S. Edition of International Material— Asia. Sanho’s manhwa Purgatory Funeral Cakes, published by Dark Horse Comics, won in this category over four other nominees. 

However, the most significant announcement at the event remains Toriyama’s induction, which extends a run of Japanese Hall of Fame honorees that has grown steadily denser in recent years. Legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka became the first award-winner in 2002, followed by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima in 2004, and several others in the following years. 2025 alone brought two new inductees, Shigeru Mizuki and Junji Ito, matching this year’s pace of Toriyama and Nagai entering together.