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§ The Lammy Awards were presented last night, aka the Lambda Literary Awards, which honor LGBTQ literature in many categories from lesbian romance to transgender fiction. The Graphic novel nominees were:

100 Crushes by Elisha Lim
Band Vs. Band Comix Volume 1 by Kathleen Jacques
Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag by A.K. Summers
Second Avenue Caper: When Goodfellas, Divas and Dealers Plotted Against the Plague by Joyce Brabner, Illustrated by Mark Zingarelli
Snackies by Nick Sumida Snackies

And the winner, courtesy of Cecelia Tan who live tweeted the awards is

Edited to clarify my thoughts: all five nominees and the winner are just really damn good comics that reflect the gay community and creators so well. I much prefer this list to the GLAAD Media awards, which I know are meant are meant to recognize mainstream work with gay themes, but end up making it look like a superhero sidekick who is portrayed well is the equal of a heartfelt work. Anyway, I hope these LAMMY nominees get more attention. Second Avenue Caper got very little attention when it came out and it deserves a lot more.

§ Speaking of things LGBTQ, yesterday’s Caitlyn Jenner debut brought a lot of talk about transgender people and Boing Boing has a GLAAD guide on what various terms mean, what should be used, what shouldn’t and how to talk about this without being an asshole. I know there is a lot of sensitivity over these matters, and it can be confusing but this guide is very useful and (to me anyway) very clear on being sensible and sensitive. I’ve known several people who transitioned and yeah, the pronoun thing does catch you up now and then, but you know, the main thing is: don’t be an asshole.

§ Fantagraphics Books has redesigned their website! It looks great and all the feeds now work in my ancient RSS reader.

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§ And one of the things the site has is a preview of this weekends debut New South Festival of Literary Arts & Cartooning Austin. TX’s entry in the Comics Art Festival parade. IT’s Saturday at the French Legation Museum. There’s a kickoff party on Friday.

§ Michael Cavna examines cartoon plagiarism , but not the cutting off the signature on Tumblr type thing, or the stealing from Deviant art for t-shirts thing. No this was an “editorial cartoonist” who passed of a lot of other people’s work as his own:

Particularly striking in recent months, though, has been numerous examples of unoriginal cartoon art appearing in the Montgomery Sentinel, a community newspaper that covers Maryland’s Montgomery County in suburban Washington. In example after example, cartoons appearing in the Sentinel have featured art clearly lifted from the work of top cartoonists, but now re-labeled and re-captioned — and re-signed “William Charles.”

The Sentinel re-labeler obviously found the art of such cartoonists as Jeff Parker, Walt Handelsman and Mike Shapiro, as well as the late New Yorker cartoonist Leo Cullum. Cagle calls the Sentinel case “pretty blatant.”


The cartoonist, who went by the name “Charles William” was an unpaid freelancer, but still. The plagiarized cartoons have been removed and the Montgomery Sentianel has apologized.

§ Zainab Akhtar on the year’s best comics… so far.

§ Here’s another story I didn’t cover that another webste has a good piece on. Panel Patter writes about Short Run’s “The Dash” Grant — this is a $250 grant given by the Seattle CAF; deadline for submissions is June 30th.

This year, in addition to putting on the show, Short Run is offering grant, which they’re calling The Dash, giving a creator a chance to receive $250 in order to help them create and exhibit a new comic project at the show on October 31st. There’s a complete breakdown of the rules for the grant at this link, but they’re all pretty straight forward. You have to be able to attend the show, for example, and if you do not finish the comic on time, you are required to return the grant money, which is split into an advance and a completion bonus. In addition to the money, you’ll receive mentoring from one of the Special Guests, be featured at the show, and get your half-table for free. So there’s definitely some added value above and beyond the $250 cash. You can’t just wing it, either–you must show them 10 samples, provide an outline and timeline, and explain your experience with making a comic. One of the things I like about this is that while it’s an open opportunity, you do need to show your seriousness and commitment–it’s not going to be tossed off to someone with a fly-by-night idea.


All details on the grant are available here.

§ At BookCon Jeff Smith told me a few tidbits about this fall’s CXC festival in Columbus (which I’m told is pronounced “sexy”.). I’m sworn to secrecy until the big reveal, but the show sounds like a must do. The dates are October 2-3…which is the weekend before NYCC, but it isn’t a long trip so…I guess I have to go?

I told everyone at BEA/BookExpo that I’ve cut way back on cons this year, which sounds great but there are so many events in and around NYC alone that it’s almost meaningless. While every week is now insanely busy, there are several times of intense busyness for all. The spring’s ECCC/WonderCon/MegaCon/C2E2 mashup sounded grueling. Despite not “going anywhere” I have three shows back to back, following BEA, there’s Special Edition and then Eternal Con. In the fall it will be

SPX September 19-20 (Same weekend as the Brooklyn Book Festival)
Baltimore Comic-Con September 25-27 (followed by the Diamond Retailer show)
CXC October 2-3 (same weekend as APE)
NYCC October 8-11

…four shows four weekends. How are you supposed to do laundry any more?

1 COMMENT

  1. Hey, Beatrix, why not go all in and attend the Frankfurt Book Fair as well?!
    For once, it’s not scheduled the same weekend as NYCC, but the week following.
    Lots of comics…

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