Reuben Nominees for 2025 Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year

Each year, the National Cartoonist Society honors excellence in our profession with Divisional Awards, special honors and lifetime achievement awards, and the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. The nominees and recipient of this, our profession’s highest honor, are chosen by a confidential ballot of the members.

The Reuben was introduced in 1954 and is named after longtime Honorary President Rube Goldberg. The statue is based on one of Goldberg’s irreverent pieces of sculpture. The eight winners who had received the “Barney,” as the Billy DeBeck Award was dubbed, subsequently received Reuben statuettes and are termed Reuben winners in the Society’s annals. See all of our previous Reuben winners at our Awards section.

The winner of the Reuben will be announced on August 7, 2026 at the Reuben Awards Banquet, part of the annual NCS Conference held this year in Columbus, August 6-8. Registration is open and we can’t wait to see you there!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THIS YEAR’S NOMINEES

NOTE: Nominees are listed alphabetically by last name. Due to a tie in votes, there are seven nominees for 2026.

Dave Blazek

Dave Blazek is the creator of Loose Parts, the award-winning single panel newspaper comic now in its 26th year, syndicated by Andrews McMeel. It has earned seven nominations and won three NCS Reuben Silver Divisional awards for Best Newspaper Panel. Dave has self-published nine Loose Parts compilation books, and his work has been adapted into greeting cards sold in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.

Dave often refers to himself as the “accidental cartoonist,” having only learned to draw at age 42 and teaching himself as he went along. He also spent a few years performing stand-up comedy and writing for the Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist comic strip based on the Comedy Central television show. Dave eventually left behind a much-awarded career as an advertising creative and Creative Director to pour all his talents into Loose Parts. Now, having done some 10,000 Loose Parts cartoons in a row, he grudgingly acknowledges he might actually be a real cartoonist.

He lives outside Philadelphia in Valley Forge, PA, with his wife Eileen—an accomplished businesswoman, artist and woodworker. They have two adult daughters: one a successful designer, the other a cardiologist.

Dave insists he’s much less impressive in person.

Tauhid Bondia

Tauhid is an award-winning newspaper cartoonist and creator of the nationally syndicated comic strip Crabgrass. A Kentucky native, Tauhid began his professional career as a graphic designer and illustrator in 2004. Cartooning, however, remained a passionate hobby until he was offered a print syndication deal by Andrews McMeel in 2019 for Crabgrass, which currently runs in nearly 800 newspapers across the country and received the NCS divisional award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip in 2023.

Will Henry

Born in 1984 to the renaissance city, Providence RI, Will Henry began his cartooning career while studying at the University of Connecticut and writing for their student paper, The Daily Campus. He now works from the sunny island of Jamestown, RI, is a proud member of the NCS, and creates the syndicated comic strip Wallace the Brave.

Dav Pilkey

Dav Pilkey is the creator of more than 75 books for children and was awarded a Caldecott Honor for his picture book The Paperboy. When Pilkey was in second grade, he was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. Because of his learning and behavioral issues in school, he was often sent out in the hallway. It was in his elementary school hallway where he created comic books about Captain Underpants and Dog Man. His Dog Man series, launched to critical acclaim in 2016, was a #1 bestseller and has more than 70 million copies in print and translations in 50 languages and is one of the bestselling graphic novel series of all time. Cat Kid Comic Club series, a spin-off of Dog Man which highlights how lessons in creativity often reflect lessons in real life, is also a #1 worldwide bestseller. Dav’s first graphic novel and national bestseller, The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, was published over 24 years ago.

Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series, launched nearly 30 years ago, helped create the illustrated children’s chapter book category. Pilkey recently adapted the series to manga and teamed up with the veteran Japanese manga artist, Motojiro to create Captain Underpants: The First Epic Manga.

Dana Simpson

Dana Claire Simpson, a native of Gig Harbor, Washington, first caught the eyes of devoted comics readers with the internet strip Ozy and Millie. After winning the 2009 Comic Strip Superstar contest, she developed the strip Phoebe and Her Unicorn (originally known as Heavenly Nostrils), which is syndicated in newspapers worldwide.

There are over twenty Phoebe and Her Unicorn books, including the recent Unicorn Secrets, all from Andrews McMeel Publishing. Ozy and Millie have two books also. All told, Simpson has sold over four million books.

Her books have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and won the Washington State Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Book Award. She lives with her spouse and her cat in Olympia, Washington.

Mark Tatulli

Mark Tatulli is an internationally syndicated cartoonist, best known for his popular comic strips Heart of the City and Lio, which appear in 400 newspapers all over the world.

Lio has been nominated for Germany’s 2010 Max and Moritz award and multiple times for the National Cartoonists Society’s Best Comic Strip, winning in 2009. Mark has also been nominated numerous times for cartoonist of the year by the NCS. A Lio animated television series is currently in the works.

Mark has now expanded his cartooning and writing into middle grade kids’ books, making the illustrated novel series Desmond Pucket for Andrews McMeel publishing. He also wrote and illustrated two picture books, Daydreaming and They Came, for Roaring Brook Press, a Macmillan company. He is currently working on two graphic novels for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The graphic novel, Short and Skinny, a memoir of Mark’s life in the summer of 1977, landed in bookstores in September 2018.

In addition to his cartooning experience, Tatulli is also an accomplished filmmaker and animator, and is the recipient of three Emmy awards for his prior work in television.

Mark lives in a Spielbergian development in New Jersey with his wife Donna and several nefarious cats.

Raina Telgemeier

Raina Telgemeier is the #1 New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award–winning creator of Smile, Sisters, and Guts, which are all graphic memoirs based on her childhood. She is also the creator of Drama and Ghosts, the adapter and illustrator of the first four Baby-sitters Club graphic novels, and, with Scott McCloud, the co-creator of The Cartoonists Club. Facing Feelings: Inside the World of Raina Telgemeier is based on an exhibition that was held at The Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, and was published in October 2025. Raina lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.