Junkies Wins 2018 Gem Award!

On the same day that Image Comics announced a second printing for Criminal #1, Diamond Comic Distributors announced the 2018 winners of their Gem Awards, and winners include Brubaker and Phillips' My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.

(The dateline appears to be missing from the official press release, but -- at the moment -- the main page for Press & Media confirms a January 17th publication.)

Given out for more than a decade, the Diamond Gem Awards are described as "the pinnacle of sales achievement."  Nominations are made by the distribution company "based on their sales performance and quality, and their overall impact on the industry during any given year," and winners are selected by comic book retailers -- "members of" that segment of the retail industry, so evidently not all retailers domestically or internationally.

“The Diamond Gem Awards give comic shop retailers an opportunity to recognize the vendors, titles, and products that have been critical to their success over the past year,” said Diamond President & CEO Steve Geppi.

My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies won the 2018 Diamond Gem Award for "Original Graphic Novel of the Year."

Previous winners include Fables: 1,001 Nights of Snowfall (2006), League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (2007), and Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker in The Hunter (2009).  Recently, this particular category has been dominated by DC's Earth One volumes, featuring Superman (2010), Batman (HC 2012, TP 2014, Vol. 2 HC 2015), and Wonder Woman (2017).

(The list of winners is duplicated for 2008 and 2009, but apparently it's the former that was garbled:  the actual 2008 winner for Original Graphic Novel appears to be DC's Joker book.)

Just as the second printing for Criminal suggests that -- after all these years -- demand for Brubaker and Phillips' crime comics continues to exceed expectations, this sales award for Junkies indicates the prominence of their work, without qualifications about creator-owned comics that (thus far) lack any film or TV adaptations.
Comichron's sales data for 2018 appears to confirm Junkies' place as the best-selling original work, in a category dominated by reprints of monthly issues.  Comic shops purchased just over 40,000 copies of The Infinity Gauntlet collection last year, as theaters were packed with the MCU blockbuster, and they purchased just over 10,000 copies of Brubaker and Phillips' crime-tinged romance comic.

My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies has apparently been quite the successful book, and the industry has taken notice.