Most Heavenly Small Press and Webcomic award

Helsinki Comics Festival used to give out an award for the Most Heavenly Small Press. Later the award was turned into Best Comics Blog of the Year -award. In 2021 we have combined these two and are giving out two awards: Most Heavenly small press and Most Heavenly webcomic.

Application instruction

Small press category:

  • Any zine/small press/self-published comic is fine in this category.
  • Very small publishers and collectives can also submit their zines here.
  • Comics must have been finished within the last five years.
  • If your comic was nominated in this award last year, don’t nominate it this year.

If you’re unsure, email us at helsinkizinefest@gmail.com

Webcomic category:

  • If it’s online, it counts! Any webcomic which is published on for example at Instagram, Patreon, Webtoon, Tapas, Tumblr, ComicFury, your own website or blog platform.. 
  • Ebooks, if they’ve never been printed and do not exceed 30 pages. If they have also been printed, please submit them to the Small Press category instead.
  • Don’t enter your comic this year if it isn’t updating anymore and if it was nominated last year.
  • If your comic has updated with new pages within a year, despite being nominated last year, feel free to nominate it again.

If you’re unsure, email us at helsinkizinefest@gmail.com

Instructions for sending:

  • Provide a link either to the website of the comic or to a downloadable PDF.
  • The PDF should be max. 30 pages long.
  • For longer comics, choose the best 30 pages for judging. For webcomics, judges will also judge the first 30 pages only.
  • If your comic is published on social media, we recommend making a PDF collection of them, so the judges don’t have to search for the comics among your other posts.
  • Sign in to a Google account to fill and submit the form.

You can also email us the PDF at helsinkizinefest@gmail.com. If you email it to us, put the name of the artist and the name of the comic in the title.

This is probably needless to say, but if your comic has won the Most Heavenly Small Press or Most Heavenly Webcomic award, don’t nominate it again.

The award is meant for Finnish people, Finns living outside of Finland or people who are living in Finland right now regardless of their nationality. The language of comics: Finnish, English. 
OPEN UNTIL 21.7.2024.

AI art

Zine Fest forbids the selling of AI art and other material generated in part or whole by artificial intelligence. Currently, the majority of AI image generators are based on non-consensual usage of visual art, and we don’t allow selling stolen material at the event or on our platforms.