Akira Toriyama was officially inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame at the Eisner Awards ceremony held during Comic-Con International 2026 in San Diego, the highest honor the American comics industry bestows, now recognizing the creator of Dragon Ball.
Toriyama was inducted alongside Go Nagai, creator of Devilman and Mazinger Z, in the Hall of Fame's Voters' Choice category. He had previously been nominated for the category in 2019 but did not get in; this induction comes after his death from acute subdural hematoma in March 2024, at age 68.
With this honor, Toriyama becomes one of only a handful of Japanese creators in the Eisner Hall of Fame, joining a list that includes Osamu Tezuka, Kazuo Koike, Goseki Kojima, Katsuhiro Otomo, Rumiko Takahashi, Moto Hagio, Keiji Nakazawa, Shigeru Mizuki and Junji Ito.
The organizers cited Toriyama for Dragon Ball's global impact. The series launched in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1984 and established the tournament arcs and escalating power systems that became a template for battle shonen as a whole. Toriyama also designed characters for the Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger game franchises, both hugely influential outside of manga.
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Source: Crunchyroll News.