Come on peeps, let’s get the best people for the job recognized for their efforts. Suggest possible nominees in the comments.

For Hall of Fame, previous winners include:
Rumiko Takahashi, Lynda Barry, Wendy Pini, Marge Henderson Buell, Marie Severin, Dale Messick, Ramona Fradon, Trina Robbins and Hilda Terry.
Who is left to nominate? LOTS OF PEOPLE!
Moto Hagio
Kanako Inuki
Machiko Hasegawa
Rose O’Neill
Nell Brinkley
Tarpe Mills
Lilly Renée
Dori Seda
Aline Kominsky Crumb
..okay that’s just for a start.

The Kim Yale award is a bit harder to parse because tehre are SO many young women coming up and blowing the doors off. I haven’t even made up my mind, but a couple of examples:

Julia Wertz
Sarah Oleksyk
Laura Park

Lulu of the Year?
Hard not to start with Rutu Modan and Marjane Satrapi.

More ideas?

Clifford Meth has begun organizing a benefit to help with the medical bills. . Neal Adams, Norm Breyfogle, Adam-Troy Castro, Peter David, Tom DeFalco, Pat DiNizio, Harlan Ellison, Mark Evanier, Neil Gaiman, Joe Kubert, Jim Lee, Stan Lee, Leah Moore, Tom Palmer, Mike Pascale, Dave Simmons, Marv Wolfman and Ash Wood have all signed up.

Colan remains one of the greatest Marvel artists of all times. His 70 issue stint on Tomb of Dracula with Marv Wolfman remains a highlight, but his work on Howard the Duck, Dr. Strange and Daredevil are also notable. Colan is one of the few artists whose work always elevated his material, not with dynamics but characterization. His people are always completely realized characters; while Colan would never be called a humor artist, his mastery of expressions definitely helped Howard the Duck, in particular, become a benchmark.

There’s an address to send cards in the top link. Please don’t be shy with your gratitude, admiration and generosity.

Meanwhile, the Eagle awards were presented Saturday night in Bristol, and everyone is still too hungover to even list the winners. That’s right, not one single person has seen fit to send out a press release! And we’re not the only ones t notice!

SF Awards Watch:

Has anyone seen a bunch of Eagle Awards flitting around the place looking for somewhere to land?

Richard Bruton:

This Internet thingy isn’t that good really is it?

The Eagle Awards were given out last night yet nowhere on the Interwebby thing can I find the results. Someone must know!

Of course it doesn’t help that the awards are technically the 2007 Eagle Awards. Given to work from 2007. But presented in 2008. Time to re-date the damn things I think.

Forbidden Planet:

Mike Conroy has been in touch to say that the full official list of winners for the Eagle Awards, announced at the Bristol comics bash at the weekend, should be going up shortly (in fact, hopefully tomorrow). There’s been a bit of a re-organisation behind the scenes of the awards, with Mike not being able to dedicate as much time to it as before due to his own work and the fact that both the Eagles and the Bristol Expo seem to grow bigger each year, although he said that the exhibitors he spoke to seemed to think they still hadn’t lost the fannish roots.

Come on, people, surely everyone is sober now!

UPDATE: Tony Lee captures the spirit of Bristol:

The bottles of gin have been tidied away and the boxes of pizza are being folded into rubbish bin sized portions. Having been bought at around 2am on the Friday night, this pizza has been the sustenance for all our needs and has pretty much kept us alive since day one. The three day pizza is now looking bad, but not to Dan, who munches slowly while crying weakly to himself.

In addition to the expected lurid graphics, there are also some old photos of the store as it looked in the 90s.

Were the 90s really so long ago that that car looks like an LeSabre or something?

Check out the multi-media slideshow, narrated by Barry.

§ PLUS : Alice C. Chen interviews Gene Yang in SFGate

Since “ABC’s” rise, the 34-year-old has lived at a frenzied pace. In late April, he released a short story, “The Motherless One,” the only graphic tale in “Up All Night,” an anthology of teenage literature. He travels to destinations such as New York and France, speaking at comic book conventions and teen book clubs. Yang also works full-time as a computer science teacher and director of information services at Bishop O’Dowd, a Catholic high school in Oakland. (He keeps his job because he enjoys education and says it would be too isolating to just cartoon.) He’s married to Theresa, a former teacher, and they’re parents of a 1-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. Every night after the children go to bed, Yang heads to his home office to sketch thumbnails and write for hours.

§ Everyone else linked to Cracked’s The 6 Creepiest Comic Book Characters of All Time. Who are we to say “Neigh!”

§ If you read one fashion writer’s take on the Met’s Superhero show it should be this one, by Pulitzer Prize winner Robin Givhan:

Still, there is nothing ponderous about this exhibition. How could it be stuffy and dull when a glowing green mural of the Hulk glares across the room at a three-dimensional Spider-Man climbing up a vertigo-inducing cityscape? Bolton has chosen examples from the fashion industry that are among the most dramatic interpretations of superhero style. There are ensembles from Balenciaga, in which designer Nicolas Ghesquiere’s models look like human Transformers, with metal leggings, dresses held together by brass-colored rings, and shoes seemingly constructed out of industrial chains and rivets. Dolce & Gabbana’s silver bustiers and molded skirts sparkle next to the Iron Man suit — each of them addressing a tug of war between invincibility and vulnerability.

[Link via Mark Coale.]

§ Alex Ross, fashion model?

§ Weirdness of the day: the very bizarre ups and downs of Yaoi House.

I saw it this weekend, and loved it. Loved every minute of it. It was creative, imaginative, innovative. It was made with care and love. The characters all had story arcs. The story was laid out one scene at a time and made sense. Sure, the whole movie was a cartoon where normal rules of space and time did not apply — in one cityscape you could see a Dubai-like skyscraper topped by what looked like Mr. Peanut, for chrissake — but what do you expect from a movie where a chimpanzee is accepted as a normal family member? It’s got pancakes, Shaft, Segways, Black vikings, ninjas, girls piloting pink helicopters, cars covered in snake skin, races in ice caves where doom befell once before, and Christopher Hitchens as the villain. That’s a good time to me.

The Wachowskis, who both directed and wrote the kid-friendly film, have created a world with its own thrilling, topsy turvy logic. The visual style is like nothing ever seen before, a mash-up of Tron, Blade Runner and Gran Turismo but taken to a new degree of kinetic flair. Backgrounds explode into plastic and chrome speedlines, cars leap and bounce. Deserts are searing orange clouds, fireworks are purple neon. Cars don’t just race, they race through tunnels, not just tunnels, but tunnels animated with racing zebras. Why? Who cares. The internal dynamics require it. The whole movie is shot in bullet time. Yes, it was exhausting — the intensity is too much for a two-hour plus movie. And yeah, if you have motion sickness or are prone to seizures, it will probably kill you.

When it isn’t racing around the track, the story is mostly told through big, big close-ups of the actors. Most everyone complains that the acting is flat, but I think that’s beside the point. The only way to make a successful CGI movie is to keep the actors in the foreground, and keep them likable. If you don’t like Susan Sarandon when she’s making peanut butter sandwiches for an all-night family chassis-welding party, you have no heart.

SPEED RACER captures the rhythms of manga — the sentimentality and emotional overdrive. The characters are always telling each other how they feel in no uncertain terms. It isn’t subtle, but it supplies all the narrative drive the day-glo racing needs.

But the level of opprobrium being laid on this movie is hard to fathom. Over at Nikki Finke, its paltry $20 mil this weekend is rightly seen as a blow to Warners, but the comments are a Newsarama-level beat down. And I just don’t get it. In a world where CGI explosions and digital farting animals are just casually dismissed as the expected mediocrity, here’s a movie that tries to be different and ups the ante significantly. And gets slammed for it. Sure the story is predictable…but so was IRON MAN’s. Anne Thompson rounds up more of the scorn, but is a bit more sympathetic overall.

I think SPEED RACER will have a long life on DVD, and will in time, like Robert Altman’s Popeye before it, become accepted as something that succeeds on its own terms. In the meantime, I fear the Wachowskis will be left in the Hollywood wilderness. My guess is that they really were trying to make a kid-friendly blockbuster; instead they’ve made something crazy and idiosyncratic that will go down as a big $100 million+ stinker.

Perhaps there is one good side to the perceived failure of SPEED RACER: if more little kids saw it, there would be a high chance of an epidemic of epilepsy. Maybe it’s just my ADD talking, but this movie was like a shot of Adderall…it made me feel peaceful and happy.

Technorati Tags: Matt Fraction

It’s no secret that The Wachowski’s SPEED RACER is primed to be the summer’s first big FLOP. Nikki Finke explains:

The real problems plaguing this pic occurred not in the marketing but in the production. Oh heck, they started as far back as handing control of the project to the writer-director Wachowski siblings (since they’re no longer brothers). The Industry scuttlebutt is that Warner Bros Pictures Group prez Jeff Robinov, a one-time agent, gave way too much power to his former clients. Of course, the success of their Matrix franchise justified a certain degree of autonomy. But Robinov and for that matter his boss Alan Horn should have written into the contract that Speed Racer had to clock in at 90 to 100 minutes long — the average for kiddie pics these days — and not the absurd 2 hours, 15 minutes length it is now.

Now we’d gladly sit through 2 hours (we think) of a SPEED RACER acid trip, which looks like nothing so much as playing an auto racing game. But most people wouldn’t. Movie Marketing Madness has more on how Warners dropped the ball

And right there I think you have a sense of how this movie is differing from most of the other tentpole releases this summer: It’s the only one that seems to be sublimating character for visuals. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, heck even The Incredible Hulk have all taken pains to make sure it’s the character every bit as much as the special effects that are drawing people in. I can’t help but think it’s this sterility in approach that’s contributing to the lack of buzz around the movie and its poor tracking. People are engaging with the characters that they’re seeing as more fully fleshed out rather than something that just looks wicked cool.

Be that as it may we have every intention of going to see SPEED RACER. First off, it looks weird, even if it is dreadful. Second, the SPEED RACER cartoon was our first great love. We HAD to be home in time for Speed. We threw horrible tantrums when we missed it, and wore our vinyl-lined Speed-esque kiddie driving gloves until our mom had to just about cut them off our hands and they smelled like egg salad inside. So yeah there’s some nostalgia at play. But we just like Speed Racer.

BONUS: the new Speed Racer cartoon debuted on Nick recently, and it was written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.

Your humble Helper Monkey had to stay up past his bedtime to watch tonight’s spooky episode, so let’s get right to it.

– What’s with the eye motif becoming a weekly occurrence?

– Locke’s wrestling theme would surely be Cream’s “Born Under a Bad Sign.”

– That Richard Alpert. He really does get around, doesn’t he?

– I loved Ben’s JAWS music.

– Lance Reddick will always be Lt. Daniels to me.

– Again, Jack has the worst judgment in the world.

– Hanging out a spooky cabin? Gonna be a while. Have a snickers.

Posted by Mark Coale

There are a host of related events, as well, starting this Saturday at 2:

• Jeff Smith and Scott McCloud in Conversation Book signing follows Sat, May 10, 2008 | 2:00PM Mershon Auditorium

• Lucy Shelton Caswell and Dave Filipi on Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond
Wed, May 14, 2008 | 12:30PM Wexner Center Galleries

In this informal gallery talk, the curators of Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond talk about the project’s development and selected pieces in the exhibition. Lucy Shelton Caswell is professor and curator of Ohio State’s Cartoon Research Library. Dave Filipi is the Wexner Center’s curator of film and video.

• Terry Moore
Artist’s Talk Book signing follows Thu, May 15, 2008 | 7:00PM Film/Video Theater

• Paul Pope
Artist’s Talk Book signing follows Tue, May 20, 2008 | 7:00PM Film/Video Theater

Bonus: See photos of the show set-up at the Bone blog.

ALSO: Smith talks about the exhibit with Vaneta Rogers.

Technorati Tags: Jeff Smith

Meanwhile, up in Seattle, it’s the Emerald City Comicon, marking the second big comics event in the Pacific Northwest in three weeks. The guest list is an eclectic brew, from Kurt Busiek and Tony Bedard to Bryan Lee O’Malley and Derek Kirk Kim. There are a few media guests,m but even these seem to be part of the gang, like Wil Wheaton and Fat Momma.

ECCC seems to be a thoroughly modern and grown up take on the regional con. It mixes in some of the hallmarks of the Wizard-Era, like variant covers (below) but they are covers for books by Mike Allred and Jay Faerber, so you don’t mind so much. Since it’s located in Indie Central, home to Fantagraphics and a bunch of alterna-toon legends. that side of comics is well represented. And everyone lives in peace and harmony, from what we’ve heard.

Anyway, read an interview with showrunner Jim Demonakos, or eyeball Fantagraphics new offerings at the show. Or attend the party above, tomorrow, or the one below, tonight. Have a good time for us.

A highlight of the programming will be, as always, the Hypotheticals panel:

5.00 PM Hypotheticals: Helmed by Lee “Budgie” Barnett and Dave Gibbons, Hypotheticals returns for its NINTH year at Comic Expo. See Walt Simonson, Louise Simonson, Emma Vieceli and Karen Berger (Vertigo Executive Editor) transported to Earth-Dave and faced with hypothetical scenarios drawn from the comics industry headlines. Variously described as “must see…” and “riotously hilarious”, it’s best summed up by former panelist Mike Carlin’s comment of “More fun than you should be allowed to have at a convention!”

Perusing the guest list, it jumped out at us how many of the guests are now manga artists; not that that would shock anyone, but way up from six years ago the last time we attended.

Laurel Maury wrote to us with this note the other day:

SVA’s entering class this fall had more women than men for the comics/illustration major. 32 to 30.

That’s just crazy talk.

ICv2 also reports that Josh Neufeld’s webcomics A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge will be published by Pantheon in August 2009. The strip, dealing with the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, is currently being serialized at Smith Magazine. It’s the second Smith webcomic to get a book deal, following Shooting War by Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman.

And here are some preview pages (click for larger versions.)

Technorati Tags: Desperado

That convention also features the debut of $ELL OUTS #1 written by Barlow and Keith Moriarty, with interior art by Tim Hulsizer and a cover by Greg Giordano, the Burlington, Vt. artist who turned heads with last year’s Trees & Hills’ NEW STARS anthology cover. Tedford will also unveil his new comic, FOUR DAYS.

Up next is Broke: An Affordable Arts Fair in Peterborough, N.H. on May 31. In addition to scores of comics by local creators, Trees & Hills will also be giving away copies of the first two installments of TWIG, a new monthly comics flyer that debuted in April.

Finally, Trees & Hills will return to the MoCCA Arts Festival for a second year in a row. The group will debut its latest anthology – SWINGIN’ HITS – a new book that features comics about music by creators from across the three states. The comic will also come with a free CD of songs by local creators!

Also debuting at that show will be MIMI’S DOUGHNUTS #15 by Bennett, BOOTY #21 by Anne Thalheimer and SQUARE DANCE #3 by Tedford.

The premiere social cartooning group for Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts, Trees & Hills comics formed in late 2005 after several regional creators met at a 24-Hour Comic event in Brattleboro, Vt. The group is open to all creators of any age or talent.

Since then, the group organized dozens of cartooning parties, published three anthologies of new cartoons and comics and helped give a voice to scores of talented creators from across New England. Major projects this year include launching a free monthly comics flyer and two new comics anthologies.

For more information, please visit www.treesandhills.org