‘It Rhymes With Takei’ Nominated for 2026 Eisner Award

Wow, It Rhymes With Takei was nominated for “Best Graphic Memoir” at the 2026 Eisner Awards.

This was the second time our team of George Takei, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker, and myself teamed up with Top Shelf Productions to tell the story of George’s life experience in a graphic novel, and both times we’ve received Eisner Award nominations. That’s hard to comprehend.

It’s been incredible enough to watch the first book, They Called Us Enemy, go on to international acclaim and become one of the bestselling nonfiction graphic novels of the last ten years. Accomplishments that were unimaginable while we had our heads down doing the work.

Like that book, It Rhymes With Takei lands at a moment in American history when the hard-fought progress of Civil Rights and LGBTQ+ representation are under attack not by outlying forces, but within the very halls of administrative power.

They Called Us Enemy captured the disgusting history of Japanese American internment and put faces to the names of those who perpetrated these injustices at a time when the U.S. government was ripping immigrant families apart at the border. We drew unmistakable lines from past actions to present policies.

It Rhymes With Takei comes at another fraught time for Democracy. Transgender individuals have become scapegoats for complicated societal problems over which they have no control or influence, while the Supreme Court strips away Civil Rights piece by piece, attacking reproductive rights, women’s right, voting rights, with suggestions that landmark rulings on gay marriage are next. George’s story illustrates the inhumanity of those actions.

As proud and honored as I am at this latest Eisner Award nomination, I am mostly hopeful — not that we go home with another trophy on a Friday night in July — but instead hopeful that knowledge gained by people like George is being read and learned by current and future generations; that it can inform and inspire them as they build towards a better tomorrow.

It’s never too late to learn. It’s never too late to change. That’s why I believe in books like It Rhymes With Takei.

Congrats to the whole team:
George Takei
Steven Scott
Harmony Becker
Jose Villarrubia
Nathan Widick
Leigh Walton

See the full list of nominees HERE.