Awards

Whatever you thought of the hosts, the win in the Best Animated Short Film for Shaun Tan -- which we correctly predicted -- was a nice win for a very talented artist. Although the Australian Tan is more of an illustrator than a cartoonist, his best known work, THE ARRIVAL, is certainly an example of graphic storytelling -- so if he isn't exactly on our team, he's pretty darned close.

Maybe it's just the way Twitter brings all your snarky friends from around the world together to be snide at once, but from the very beginning of last night's Oscar™ telecast, it was obvious that the youth movement of Anne Hathaway and James Franco was going to be dire.

As we point out every year, picking the big categories at the Oscars is easy -- sentiment and other awards and past voting practices make for a formula that is easy to call, even when it changes over Awards season -- see: THE KING'S SPEECH. So to truly ace your Oscar picks and win the big prize, you've got to master the obscure categories like Best Documentary Short and Best Animated Short. We don't handicap the first caegory -- although you can't go wrong picking anything about horrible genocide topics like AIDS, Rwanda, the Holocaust and so on.

Chinese artist Xiao Bai was just presented with the Gold Award in the International Manga Awards. The prize, founded by Japan's former otaku-loving prime minister Taro Aso are presented to recognize international achievements in the manga style. Bai won for “So Far, So Close,” a time travel story about a woman who meets her own son.

Eisner judges have selected four automatic inductees into the Hall of Fame instead of the usual two because, in the words of administrator Jackie Estrada, "The judges felt that some significant contributors to comics' history were being consistently overlooked by the regular voters. Choosing only two creators to induct was proving too difficult this year. The solution they chose was to single out individuals from four aspects of the medium."

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America annually presents the Nebula Awards to the best in those genres. The complete list of nominations is here but we'll mentioned two. Barry Deutsch's HEREVILLE: HOW MIRKA GOT HER SWORD is nominated in the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy category. And SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD was nominated for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation.

Speaking of literary awards, the LA Times Book Awards announced their finalists yesterday and the new graphic novel category yielded the following honorees:

This spring's Xeric Grant winners have been announced. Founded by Peter Laird, the Xeric is presented to worthy cartoonists to provide them with funds to print their projects. A total of $31,158 was awarded for seven comic book projects.  The Foundation has awarded in excess of $2.4 million to comic book creators and nonprofit organizations since its first grant cycle in September 1992.  

Presented by Diamond based on sales impact and overall quality, the 2010 Gem Awards reflect the same bestsellers we've been talking about here for a while: SCOTT PILGRIM, WALKING DEAD, BRIGHTEST DAY, SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE, KICK-ASS. Complete list below:

UNKNOWN SOLDIER led the 2011 Glyph Award nominations, with six nods. The awards are presented each year to "the best in comics made by,...

This year's Stumptown Comics Awards are going to a juried format, and to do this...you must have a jury. The five judges form a...

The winners of the 2010 Webcomics List Award have been announced -- fittingly -- in a webcomic. Winners were chosen by a panel of judges: Although there is not a text list of winners, Brigid Alverson at Robot 6 made a print list: