Awards

While comics fans were celebrating comics and other delights at New York Comic Con, publishers and fans in Europe were congregating in Frankfurt, Germany,...

Matt Fraction has become the first comics writer to win a prestigious PEN Center literary award for his "Outstanding Body of Work." The awards are presented annually to writers living west of the Mississippi. A panel of judges choose finalists in ten categories: fiction, creative nonfiction, research nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, translation, journalism, drama, teleplay, and screenplay.

Apparently they are rioting in Canada over the fact that a man was nominated for the Kim Yale award. If by rioting, you mean writing some articles for the internet. Von Allan , the man in question nominated for the previously all-female Kim Yale Award for Most Talented Newcomer, was interviewed by the CBC and this gave rise to a couple of pieces, noting what a groundbreaker he was being nominated for an award traditionally given to women cartoonists:

Nominees for the 2010 Lulu Awards, recognizing "the people and projects that helped to open eyes and minds to the amazing comic and cartooning...

Presented Saturday night at the Small Press Expo, here are the 2010 Ignatz Award winners. Nominees were chosen by a panel comprised of Anders...

The 2010 Screams for the best in loud, blood-letting, gun-thumping entertainment were announced this week; however the comics nominees include things like ASTERIOS POLYP,...

From Baltimore last night, the winners -- ASTERIOS POLYP, David Mazzucchelli and The Rocketeer took home three, CHEW, and THE WALKING DEAD two each in various combinations. Despite ongoing controversy over the nominations, the winners were strong selections, very close to this year's Eisner winners, at least on first glance.

If you were following our live tweets of the Harveys last night, (and those from ComixMix and JahFurry) you saw portions of Mark Waid's keynote speech transcribed. While claiming it was a "vodka-fueled rant," Waid delivered a heartfelt, if off-the-cuff, talk on the importance of the idea and the supremacy of comics as a medium of ideas. He started off with remarks on the history of copyright, stating it was a means to allow ideas to go into the public domain where they could remain powerful. "No one would say we'd be better off if Shakespeare plays weren't allowed to be read and performed in high schools," he used as an example. While not advocating piracy, his main argument seemed to be that it's already done, the genie is out of the bottle, and struggling to keep ideas protected isn't as important as finding a way to profit from those ideas.

Via PR, as alluded to in an earlier post, the Hero Initiative is introducing a new award to be presented at the Harveys on Saturday, Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year Award.

They said it couldn't be done but at Saturday's Creative Arts Emmys, Dean Haspiel was a winner in the Main Title Design category for Bored to Death, along with collaborators Tom Barham, Marci Ichimura, and Anthony Santoro. Haspiel is shown here with series creator Jonathan Ames and their Emmy. Other nerdcentric winners were Neil Patrick Harris for Glee, Robot Chicken for Outstanding Short-format Animated Program and Isaiah Mustafa for the best Commercial, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. And of course, Betty White.

The nominations for the 14th annual Ignatz Awards have just been announced, with the winners to be presented at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda on Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 9:00 PM. Nominees were chosen by a panel of five judges: Anders Nilsen, David Kelly, Rob G, Joshua Cotter and Trevor Alixopoulos. Winners will be chosen by attendees. As always, it's an eclectic mix, with many lesser known gems very much worthy of your attention:

Friends of Lulu president Valerie D'Orazio announces that this years Friends of Lulu Awrds will have a new home -- the Long Beach Comic Con. Nominations are open to the public, and can be made here -- but hurry the deadline is August 23rd. After nearly shutting down just a few weeks ago, Friends of Lulu has reemerged with an interim volunteer board. In addition, missing financial records have been recovered, and the organization is moving forward once again.