San Francisco, CA—At WonderCon 2010, Prism Comics announced the recipients of this year’s Queer Press Grant: It’s A Tie! The grant is being awarded to both Steve MacIsaac0 for his submission, Wuvable Oaf and to Eric Orner for his submission, Storybox. Prism Comics, which supports LGBT comics, creators, issues and readers, established the Queer Press Grant to encourage the publication of LGBT themed comics.

“The extremely high quality of submissions this year resulted in a vote so close, it came down to an exact tie,” said Justin Hall, Prism’s Talent Relations Chair and previous Queer Press Grant winner for Glamazonia, “with Eric Orner, an old-time pro in the world of queer comics, taking his work in a new and fascinating direction, and Ed Luce, one of the brightest new lights in queer indie comics, having made a big splash in only a couple of years on the scene.”

Eric Orner is a cartoonist, illustrator and animation artist. His comic strip, The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, one of the world’s most widely published LGBT-themed newspaper comics, has appeared in both gay and mainstream media throughout North America and Europe. It was adapted into a feature film in 2005. For more information, please go to ethangreen.com. His Storybox project, an online magazine devoted to publishing graphic and animated stories, features Orner’s multi-part travelogue Jerusalem Graphic Diary.

Ed Luce’s comic book series, Wuvable Oaf, chronicles ”one big, scary lookin' dude's search for romance in a city that looks suspiciously like San Francisco”. His creation has quickly won acclaim from around the globe and was nominated in 2009 for an Ignatz Award in the "Promising New Talent" category. Luce’s paintings have been exhibited in galleries, museums, store windows and bathrooms from San Diego to Buffalo to Paris. For more information, go to wuvableoaf.com or visit the "Wuvable Oaf Boutique" at Goteblud, a vintage ‘zine store in San Francisco.

This year’s Queer Press Grant in the amount of $2,000 was made possible by generous contributions from Roger Klorese (Prism’s Publications Chair), individual donors via Prism’s Facebook page, and Prism Comics. Prism welcomes contributions towards next year’s grant.

Previous winners of the Queer Press Grant are:

• Steve MacIsaac for Shirtlifter

• Megan Gedris for YU+ME

• Tommy Roddy for Pride High and Justin Hall for Glamazonia

• Pam Harrison for House of the Muses: The Latter Days of Sappho of Lesbos

The deadline for next year’s grant will be October 1, 2010. Prism will be offering portfolio review at San Diego’s Comic-Con International 2010 exclusively for those people submitting to the grant. Reviewers in the past have included Phil Jimenez, Bob Schreck, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Colleen Coover among many others. For more information about the grant and the submission process, go to prismcomics.org/grant.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).