(paraphrased) If the Harvey nominations are a joke, what does it say about you that you didn’t even get nominated.

Nyah.

I stand by my initial statements. In truth, I don’t love the Harveys specifically, and I certainly don’t love the past few years’ ballots (I had a 30 minute rant this year with some of the staff before any of you did), but it’s not their fault that the creative community didn’t vote.

I’ll reiterate the underlying theme in my previous post: http://www.harveyawards.org/ — go vote (and encourage your peers to do so as well) if you want results.

As to writing off the potential of various subject matters for making good comics, that’s certainly up to the individual — but we might think about those film reviewers who once dismissed comic books out of hand as being source material for potentially good movies. As with anything else, execution matters — as well as what else the story is about. I don’t speculate many Oscar voters are big boxing fans, but I can think of at least three boxing movies that got best picture nominations — including two that won.

Congrats to everyone, we’re all awesome. Yay, team comics.

And not everyone thinks Toth’s Hot Wheels books are classics. Or the hot roid stuff. It’s wonderfully drawn sorta fun goofball comics. Like Toth’s Black Canary or Batman or almost anything. Yeah, my opinion. There’s a reason people emulate Toth’s art and don’t study his comics for their writing, I’m sorry.

And again — it isn’t just the goddamned Nascar book, fer chrissakes. That’s one pile of embers in the housefire. Cripes almighty.

Flame away if you must.

Sad — are you 16? I realize that’s mean-spirited, insensitive and perhaps even irresponsible, sorry, but I hate being lectured, especially by someone who doesn’t seem to have a sense of history or knowledge about what they’re discussing. It’s a little hard to separate your “observations” from your “facts”, Edward R. Murrow, in your enthusiastic, well-meaning but overall terribly naive post. “I have no insight” and “guesstimate” don’t shore up to well as facts, and the information you pass along that aren’t labeled as “Um, I think this is true” seem pretty shaky to me as well as the straight dope. I’m sorry if people are being mean. Maybe folks like myself are being insensitive to other creators. I think they can take it, if they even know about it, I’m not saying they suck or deserve nothing, I’m saying there’s a problem here, a major problem, with the award they’re up for. Should it be ignored to be nice to people? Should folks wait a few days to be sweet, and let the situation lapse? I’m sorry, I don’t believe that. I’ve benefited from folks “being nice” vis a vis awards programs, and I’ve complained about the problems, even when I’ve won them, even when I’ve emceed the awards. And I’ve complained about the Eisners, and the Ignatzes. And I’ve voted against myself when I thought my nomination was charity, or worse, bullshit. I’m not as good as Jaime Hernandez, as well as tons more, I couldn’t vote for myself in certain categories and instances knowing that. And that’s one of several times over several years.

So, anyway, I’m sorry, I’m not going to congratulate everyone for getting to ride a leaky boat. I haven’t fired flaming arrows at them, either.

And your comment about being “irresponsible to the community” is such a ridiculous teen-agey piece of team comics horsehockey I could type another hour about why I disagree with it, and in fact find it depressing. The community doesn’t need half-assed anything, it doesn’t need platitudes, it doesn’t need awards that have become meaningless. What the field and industry needs is to get more of it’s act together, to grow up, and to take better care of itself and whatever the hell the “comics community” is.

On a personal note, regarding your “did you vote” cliches, did you read some of my qualifications for criticizing the Harvey awards and their process and history? I was involved with the awards for much of five years and hosted them for 4. Feel free to continue prattling your know-nothing condemnations. And I vote almost every year, even if it seems pointless.

Dean — We know you’re a nice guy, thanks for reminding us. Peace out. The Harveys are still fucked up.

Similar things have happened with the Hugo and Nebula Awards over in SF fandom. The Nebulas, particularly, are easy to game; something needs only 10 votes to make the prelim ballot. That’s how a Star Trek fan film landed on the Nebula ballot last year. Then there’s the outcry over Harry Potter on the Hugo ballot a few years back.

It’s people gaming the system, taking advantage of the cracks in the plaster. Yes, it’s a tempest now, but the solution isn’t to end the system. Or even to game the system next year because now you know you can. The solution is to mend the system.

Actual dialogue from one page:

“This is incredible! I can use my mental powers to see the road seconds before I see it with my eyes!”

“Uh-oh! The guy in front of me is about to spin out!”

“I’d better get out of the way!”

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/pdf_spreads/StarbridgeMediaFCBD09_CONSUMER.pdf

Listen, can everyone just stop playing devil’s advocate for a second? We all like to teach the little kids that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover but let’s call a spade a spade: I know a NASCAR comic isn’t going to be good the same way I know a WAL-MART comic isn’t going to be good. You can call me ignorant if you’d like, I’ll take the shot. But then you have to go out, read it, and write an honest review. Deal?

With desktop and digital publishing and the world wide web at our fingertips, it’s become the onus of the independent and freelance creator to hype their own wares. I did my best to alert folks about my stellar 2008 year of output on my blog: http://man-size.livejournal.com/410480.html and cross-posted this link on FaceBook, MySpace, and via private email. I thought I had a pretty good chance at getting some kinda Harvey nomination. Alas…

Thanks to David Gallaher for your nominations and thanks for championing webcomix. Big ups to your genre-bending HIGH MOON nomination with Steve Ellis. Also, a high-five goes to the Timony Bros for THE NIGHT OWLS. Between, ACT-I-VATE, Transmission X, Zuda, et al, webcomix are a force to be reckoned with and will continue to penetrate all comix categories as format and distribution lines blur between print and digital.

- In reviewing the blogs/webpages/Tweets of the nominees out of curiousity yesterday, I found that I’d guesstimate 75-80% of the ones that had active pages had posted a “Hey, I got nominated for a Harvey! Cool!” type of message, if not a much longer exposition (all of our thoughts are with you, Rich Faber). While it might not mean something to some vocal on-line members of the community, it did to the nominees. It is unbelievably insensitive to the nominees and irresponsible to the community for those of you spewing animosity instead of congratluations to the nominees and offers of assistance to the Harvey Committee.

- A lot of the work nominated is very familiar to me. A lot of the work nominated is vaguely familiar to me. A handful of the items nominated are alien to me. But those in the “alien” category just moved up to the “vaguely” category for me, and I’m apt to say to myself of anything I’m not very familiar with, “Well, some not insignificant number of the creative community nominated this as worthy of seeing, so I’m curious why.” That’s money in your pockets, creators/publishers.

- If you review the nominees for the past few years (and I’d guess many years in the past as well), there are always some odd ducks that sneak into the nomination process. It is rare that these end up winning the final awards. HEY CREATOR, YOU DON’T LIKE NASCAR COMICS #5? VOTE FOR SOMETHING ELSE ON YOUR FINAL BALLOT SUBMISSION.

- I have no insight as to how many creators submit ballots, but I have seen numerous creators posting here, Newsarama, Bleeding Cool, CBR, etc. and some have posted their ballot choices, so I know that, while maybe some of you are not participating, many others are, enough so that the nominees listed on those who posted didn’t get selected because others had more nominations.

- Remember http://comicsindustryforobama.ning.com/? Remember how you guys HATED Bush and wanted to mobilize for change? We know you can move past the self-loathing apathy and be effective, because we saw it all over the web, all over the Convention circuit, and in some books. GET OUT AND VOTE! Not sure how? http://www.harveyawards.org/. IT AIN’T HARD.

- The Harvey ballots get posted on every major (and some minor) vaguely comics-oriented webpage. The Harvey ballots are brought in hard-copy to some publishers so they can pass them along to their creative staff. The Harvey ballots are e-mailed directly to thousands of members of the creative community. IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO AND DIDN’T VOTE AND DON’T LIKE THE RESULTS, YOU CAN AFFECT CHANGE IN THE FINAL AWARDS THIS YEAR OR IN BALLOTS IN FUTURE YEARS.

-Figuring out how to contact the Harvey staff to offer assistance is like finding water at the beach — just look for it. It’s all over the ballot. It’s all over the announcements of the ballot posted to all of those news sites. It’s all over the Harvey website. I believe it’s even on the Baltimore Comic-Con website. How many of you that have offered words of condemnation have picked up the phone and called Paul McSpadden? Or took the time to e-mail to say, “Hey, I’m frustrated with what I saw this year, and I’d like to help fix it moving forward?” Calling for the awards to end is like asking Apple to stop making computers after the Lisa didn’t sit well in your stomach. Where would the comics industry be without Apple?

These awards are designed to enable the creative community to choose what they would like to see rewarded. If the non-apathetic members of the community who have a preference for certain peers or titles to be rewarded go out and make that happen, the apathetic members of the community who didn’t do so have no one to be angry with but themselves. To blame it on the very open and easy process is myopic.

I haven’t seen many reax specifically aimed at Zuda, but several of my esteemed compatriots seem to (rightly) be taking personal issue with the negative vibes, so I’m a little fixated on that.

I was pleased to see 3 Zuda strips nominated, not only for Best Online, but Best New Series. I’ve been saying (and some would argue, proving) for years that digital media is the future of serialization in comics. Ask any indie creator, or even many larger publishers if they make money on floppies. Odds are the answer is that they make bupkuss.

The only way for comics to survive as a medium is to adapt to a changing world, and guess what? The general public wants their entertainment a.) available at hand and b.) as cheap as possible. And with smartphone devices and the like becoming the norm, it’s now possible to implement a controlled, profitable system like LongBox or several other projects that you will be hearing about shortly. Add in a color Kindle on the way and there aren’t many nails left to be laid to that coffin.

But I digress. What the Zuda noms mean is not necessarily that the ballots were stuffed but rather that maybe - just MAYBE - logic is finally taking hold and the general PTB and readership have accepted the fact that the medium of delivery does not diminish the quality of the work.

Not sure that the awards need to be changed at all; just that everyone who cares anough to take the noms to task needs to VOTE next time. Words mean diddly-squat without action.

(sidenote - to David G., thank you for your ever-solid support, but you and I both know I am never, ever going to win any popularity contests

BEST WRITER
WRITER TITLE
1. Ed Brubaker Captain America
2. Danielle Corsetto Girls With Slingshots
3. Jermey Love Bayou
4. Kevin Colden Fishtown
5. Johnathan Levitt Backstage

BEST CARTOONIST

1. Danielle Corsetto Girls With Slingshots
2. Dean Haspiel Street Code
3. Kevin Colden Fishtown
4. Dean Haspiel Fear My Dear
5. Joe Infurinti Ultra Lad

BEST COVER ARTIST
1. Drew Raush Sullengrey
2. Drew Raush The Dark Goodbye
3. Kevin Colden Fishtown
4. Dean Haspiel The Alcoholic
5. James Jean Fables

As you can see, not many of those choices actually made the final list.

But, for BEST NEW SERIES and BEST ONLINE WORK, you better believe I nominated several of my peers from Zuda - but I also nominated Danielle Corsetto, Molly Crabapple, Kevin Colden, and others. I’m proud of the work my peers in webcomics are doing at Zuda, on Act-I-Vate, or on their own - and it’s a shame I could only nominate a few of them.

I wish one of the actual VOTERS would speak up and exlain his/her choice.

Be prepared to defend your answer.

This is comics. This is a medium where we can judge a Toth Hot Wheels story to be a classic, where a publisher can put an Atari Force story in their Best Of The Year anthology and yes, it belonged there, not because there was nothing else good but because creative folks can find something to do within that context. We can express our admiration for an aardvark-oriented Conan parody. We give awards to works like “hey, what if Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man, and that gal from Dracula all teamed up to fight crime?” Yeah, we gave League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen the award in the same year we gave one to Dork, and gave one to Jaime Hernandez, who likes to do stories about professional wrestling.
Was NASCAR Heroes #5 the best comic of the year? Not to my tastes. But that’ s not because it was a NASCAR comic book. There are plenty of topics that the comics form has done great, good, and lousy stories about.
To assume that a NASCAR comic book couldn’t be any good because it’s a NASCAR comic is like assuming a comic book can’t be any good because it’s a comic book. It something that one can say with a sneering tone and thus skip having to say anything intelligent.

I’m amused by the reactions I’ve seen other places on the net with comics nerds mocking the entire idea of a NASCAR comic.

The issue isn’t whether NASCAR could be suitable subject matter for a comic book; it’s whether that subject could be substantial enough for a comic book about it to possibly be the “best” book of the year. I doubt that very much.

Since the biggest problem with the Harveys might be that no person or small group of people has enough familiarity with what comes out in a given year to rate the quality of the books, aside from the problem with judging the quality of an issue that’s part of an arc, the solution would be finding some way to limit the number of comics to be judged. Viewed in that context, entry fees are quite reasonable. If a publisher thinks his books are good enough to win awards, he’ll pay the fee. Given the number of (comic) books published annually, limiting the number of entrants through fees might be the best way to run an awards program in the industry, whether you’re talking about comic books or small press text books.

SRS

There was a Nascar book put out years ago that sold well and was sold at Nascar events. I believe Vortex, of all places, published it. Nobody mocked it because nobody ever heard of it. And it wasn’t voted as best comic in a screwed-up awards program. You know I loves ya Mark, but since when does selling well mean you can’t mock a project? Liefeld’s anything? Spawn? The Goddamned Batman?

Yeah, everyone’s beating up on this Nascar comic they haven’t seen or read. A lot of folks, myself included, are judging a book by it’s name. Sometimes there’s good reason. I haven’t seen year One, okay, but it if popped up on the Academy Awards list for best film, I’d say WHAT THE FUCK? Because we have brains and yeah, we generalize, but NASCAR COMIC BOOK, no matter how well done, doesn’t strike me, or many others, as representative of the BEST we collectively made, sold and bought last year. Michael says it was “not that bad”. That’s the best I’ve seen about it so far. NOT THAT BAD. Awesome. We can argue all we like, but come on. Let’s be realistic here.

And if it was just that, and let’s say I’m a jerk about the Nascar comic, and I lose that argument completely — and it was simply a matter of a fluke nom, or several flukes, because awards are flukey — this would be only about the Nascar comic. Which it isn’t, and which is shouldn’t be. It sidetracks the rest of the WTF nominations — there are two reprint books which garnered nominations in “new” categories. I think that’s kooky. Does this mean from here on in us poor bastards have to compete against Tezuka every year because he’s been reprinted? Kirby? Gaiman? Spiegelman? Los Bros? Morrison? Brubaker? Cooke? Winsor McCay? CHARLES SCHULZ –? Etc? Really? You think so? Then why is Al Jaffee — god love him — and Kyle Baker — major g-damned talent — up for best art and best writer etc when the work they did is years old? In Jaffee’s case, decades old. God help us all if this is the case, because I’m voting for Kirby and Schulz et al every year over all of us.

As Heidi and others have pointed out, the best cartoonist category is super crazy. Better than Jeff Smith was? Richard Thompson? Gilbert Hernandez? Jaime Hernandez? Insert name here? Yes, yes, my opinion. But again, let’s be serious, let’s be realistic, let’s talk like we’re at the convention bar, not the way we have to talk online and in public. I don’t relish the idea of seeming like I’m shoveling dirt on a bunch of projects and cartoonists, despite my reputation for vitriol. I’m not mad at any of the nominees, not even friggin’ Nascar. I’m mad at the program, it’s a trainwreck, and has been chugging down this broken track for some years. ANd I’m depressed as well, because I used to be involved with the Harveys as emcee for four years, and contributed ideas and whatnot early on in my relationship with the award. I’ve won four Harveys, I’m not jealous or whining for attention. I used to really admire and respect the award, and it’s just fallen down and has never gotten back up. The ceremony got nicer, they made statues instead of plaques (I liked the plaques, personally), and they have power point or whatever and nice imagery from the nominees and Kurtzman’s life. What they never got was people voting. The mainstreamers used to knock the Harveys b/c it was seen as the “Fantagraphics award” for years, rightfully or not (not, imo). The publishers ignored the award, as did many others. It wasn’t part of SDCC, it has been batted around for years. Nominees don’t show up at the ceremony. And the voting has been skewed to the point where now everyone is arguing about it and some are saying the award should end.

I dunno if they can fix it, they’ve never had sufficient funds and from what i understand, the MOCCA Harvey event (my last, and unfortunately not my best showing) was a pretty decent financial bust. I think the award hangs on by tenacity and momentum and a desire on the promoters to keep it going for the sake of Harvey Kurtzman’s name and legacy. I understand that.

But I have this feeling, based on nothing but Kurtzman’s work and satirical bent and apparent character garnered through interviews, that he’d be kind of unhappy about what’s been happening to the award named after him. Because it’s Humbug, it’s Mad, the promoters have Trumped the process, and apparently no one can Help fix this mess. I don’t think people will flock to vote for change. And I don’t think the Harveys will be able to dent the industry and make headway towards involving more creators and publishers to take them seriously. I echo what Tom SPurgeon said recently, I don’t what purpose the Harveys serve anymore. I’m not happy about this, kids. I’m really not.

My 22 cents, take it for what it’s worth.

I don’t believe this is the case, but what if this was a book sold not through Diamond but sold at NASCAR events and had phenomenal sales numbers? Would people still mock it?

My main complain was that I wondered if the actual paper and cover were oil based as i don’t think that would be very environmentally friendly.