Dock 11 Comic Award
Here are the Shortlist Candidates
The first Dock 11 Comic Award will be presented on 5 December 2024 in Saarbrücken, Saarland. After intensive deliberation, the jury (consisting of Elizabeth Pich, Bernd Kissel, Dr. Heike Mißler and Sebastian Oehler) has now agreed on a shortlist of three nominees from numerous great submissions. Here are the three finalists and their work in a short portrait!
Masha J. Fern
Masha J. Fern came to Germany from Russia in 2022 to study Media Art and Design at HBKsaar. The 20-year-old is interested in anatomy, the construction of fantasy worlds, body horror and the colour purple. She drinks a lot of coffee and has big dreams.
Second Sky
Her graphic novel ‘Second Sky’ is about a magician who loses his powers and risks everything to get them back. In her work, she tells of denial, fear and the unbearable humiliation of being unfit for his sole purpose, and combines this convincingly with elements of friendship and humour in the midst of an original fantasy setting.
Eric Schwarz
Eric Schwarz is a freelance illustrator and comic author from Saarbrücken and studied communication design and graphic storytelling at HBKsaar. He has worked for the New York Times and has already published two books, including ‘The Art of Oversharing’.
FEUER FEUER UNGEHEUER
His submission ‘FEUER FEUER UNGEHEUER’ tells the story of four brothers coping with a trauma in fairytale form and sheds light on how this shapes their family relationships. Inspired by shadow theatre and silhouettes, the story encourages us to reflect on our own experiences.
Eric Heit
Eric Heit was born in Saarbrücken in 1995 and graduated from HBKsaar in 2022. Since then, he has worked as an illustrator, designer and comic artist.
Offbeat-Knight
His submission ‘Offbeat-Knight’ is an autobiographically inspired coming-of-age fantasy drama that deals with topics such as mental health, family responsibility, migration and gender dysphoria. The comic combines realistic coming-of-age challenges with humorous and fantastical elements inspired by Japanese manga. The aim of Eric’s work is to make diverse realities of life visible and to tell difficult topics in an accessible way.
About the Award
The Dock 11 Comic Award promotes the development of creative talent in Saarland in the field of graphic novels and comics with prize money of 5,000 €.
Comics and graphic novels are not only forms of entertainment, but also economically relevant media that address social issues, promote innovation and reflect cultural diversity. With this in mind, we see sequential storytelling as a means of preserving democracy, promoting diversity and facilitating interpersonal changes of perspective. Racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and otherwise discriminatory works are generally excluded from the competition.
The Comic & Graphic Novel division is considered a cluster of excellence for communication designers and other sectors of the cultural and creative industries. As a mixed-medium, the sector generates many young talents for all submarkets of the creative industries that have an activity profile focussed on communication – i.e. those subsectors in which skills such as storytelling, marketing or character development are in demand. The sector is therefore important as a training ground for young talent far beyond the field of illustration. Film, gaming and advertising are only a few that draw on the talent pool of the sector.
The award offers an incentive for artists to further develop their skills and forms a structural component for the professionalisation of comic artists from Saarland. The award is also intended to support the visibility of the comics sector in Saarland and the market development of the award winners in relevant markets such as France and the Benelux region.
Contact: hallo@dock11.saarland
The Dock 11 Comic Award is funded by the Saarland Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digital and Energy.