I had a great time at the Eisners, I don’t see what the fuss is about. 3 hours once a year isn’t much to ask to showcase some of the years best (and I’m saying that as someone who’s gone before as a fan just to clap loudly for those deserving people).

In any case, anything can be improved upon and I’ve read some good suggestions here. Just keep it happening and keep drawing attention to it!

Streaming the award show online would be great, especially for people like me who can’t make it to San Diego every year. I’d like to hear the speeches. And I want to know who skipped out.

Also, the Eisners need a better “official site.” In this regard, the Harveys have the Eisners beat.

But it seems to me that the target audience is the same for both seals: the people who are actually laying down the cash.

And you know what? Why don’t we just TRY it for a year or two and see what effects it could have? I simply can’t see why blind nay-saying should be the default response.

Combine that lack of focus with the lower profiles of creators and the serialization of material, and there are problems. There are few enough movies produced during the year so that people can see many of them, assemble their “Best of” and “Worst of” lists, follow their favorite actors, etc. A comics reader can’t do that, and he’d have to spend time reading material he had no interest in, just for the sake of knowing about it.

If comics were published primarily as OGNs in a variety of genres and as close-ended works, the awards would be as significant as they are elsewhere in publishing.

SRS

Comic Con International does offer awards seals. That’s where the above image came from:
http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_seals.shtml

Most people don’t care about comics?
How many people read comic strips? How many people attend movies based on comic books and graphic novels?

Stream the next Eisner Awards ceremony. Track how many sites and how many viewers bother to watch. Slice each award into a separate YouTube video and see who watches and comments.

Like Comic-Con itself, some people might watch just to see a celebrity. But that’s not much different than have a celebrity endorsement in a commercial. Let the awards ceremony serve as a big commercial for the awards and the winners.

Again: victim.

I care about comics. The readers of Beat, Comics Reporter, Comics Journal, Daily Crosshatch, Comic Book Resources, Comicon, Newsarama, Scans_Daily, Warren Ellis’s forums, LiveJournal and the thousands who just pick up their pull lists every week care.

No one is saying that being on the same level of cultural awareness as “SPORTS” and “FILM” is the barometer of whether or not we should even bother. We SHOULD bother BECAUSE. WE. CARE.

Comics’ low self-esteem is not sexy.

It’s not a victim mindset and it’s certainly not poor me. It’s just irrational to expect a widespread interest in comic awards. The Academy Awards and ESPYs are popular because most people like movies and sports. Most people don’t care about comics and pretending like they do isn’t going to make the Eisner Awards matter.

Award ceremonies and all-star games and other events that honored excellence all started off small at one time. It wasn’t until someone focused on the event and made it important that it became so. The Academy Awards didn’t start off as a huge, internationally viewed event (well, they didn’t have TV or satellites but that’s besides the point).

My point is, if we say “this is import, this is a moment once a year where the comics industry, the comics community and fans stop what they are doing for one evening and acknowledge the efforts of the best and brightest, then I believe, over time this event could grow into a respected cultural event.

If ESPN can have a televised star-studded evening of awards for the X-games, honoring people who ride skateboards and BMX bikes, I don’t believe it’s a fantasy that an evening of honoring comics writers and artists on a grand scale is asking too much.

I thought the idea of an official award seal to put on books was great.

William George and Nate Horn: miss me with that “nobody likes comics” talk. Self-defeated, simultaneously, self-absorbed, victimology, “poor me,” what. EVER.