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The 2026 Eisner Award nominations have been announced, and the list of nominees is looking rather Absolute. Across 32 categories, DC Comics racked up 16 nominations (sharing 10 nominations with other publishers in categories like "Best Writer"), the majority of which were for books from their Absolute line. Now, in 2026, DC's Absolute Universe has cemented itself as a hit both commercially and critically, and it keeps growing. Take a look at the entire list of nominations here. 

DC's biggest hit at the Eisners isn't an Absolute book for one of the Trinity. Instead, it's Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez's Absolute Martian Manhunter - a new interpretation of a character who hasn't had an ongoing series in a decade. Originally, Absolute Martian Manhunter was planned as a 6-issue mini-series by Camp and Rodriguez, but in light of the enthusiastic fan response to the book, it was extended to a 12-issue limited series. Of course, Camp and Rodriguez had a dynamite idea for Absolute Martian Manhunter - one that made me shriek at the top of my lungs when I first heard it in 2024 - but if we can extract anything from Absolute Martian Manhunter's success, it's that both fans and critics reward DC for letting creators like Camp and Rodriguez run wild with a familiar character. 

And the same could be said across the entire Absolute line. The continued success of DC's Absolute Universe into 2026 evidences that these books are more than just their provocative loglines. Absolute Batman from Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta and Absolute Wonder Woman by Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman are both nominated for Best Continuing Series this year after they were nominated for Best New Series in 2025. In other words, the Absolute titles are continuing to meet the same level of quality that fans got from the first series arcs in these succeeding months and years. 

One glaring absence in this year's Eisner nominations was Marvel's Ultimate line, which originally began in 2024, like DC's Absolute Universe. While Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto's Ultimate Spider-Man was nominated for Best Continuing Series last year at the Eisners, Marvel had no such luck this year with its Ultimate line, which the publisher announced the end of in October 2025. Barring Deniz Camp being nominated for Best Writer for his work on Absolute Martian Manhunter, Image's Assorted Crisis Events, and Marvel's The Ultimates, Marvel's Ultimate books were completely shut out of the Eisners this year. 

Of course, Marvel still has nominations for Best Continuing Series with Murewa Ayodele and Lucas Werneck's Storm, Best New Series with G. Willow Wilson and Gleb Melnikov's Black Cat, and Best Humor Publication with Kelly Thompson and Tokitokoro's Jeff the Land Shark. But the House of Ideas lags significantly behind DC in critical acclaim. If anything, it makes me miss Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande's Black Widow series, which was canned by Marvel in 2022. 

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