I'm fond of the Slate prize for a few reasons. One is that it involves cash, and in doing so five years ago sparked a bit of a mini-trend in comics prizes doing just that. The other is that they tend to be a good mix: they were early on Noelle Stevenson, I think, and were certainly first in recognizing the titanic achievement of Carol Tyler's Soldier's Heart book. They're not forward-thinking for the sake of forward-thinking, though.
The headline has pretty much all you need to know; 
