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Eric M
ericmonster
09 April 2006 @ 09:51 pm
Eisner Awards and webcomics dust-up  
Graphic Smash editor and world-reknowned webcomic historian T. Campbell is "upset about this Eisner Digital Comic nomination for ojingogo ... the 18-page ojingogo added SEVEN pages last year." He doesn't think seven pages in a year ought to get you an award nomination. Comixpedia publisher and one-time Fat Uncle Sam with a Bacon Double Cheeseburger disbeliever Xaviar Xerexes agrees, writing: "It seems unfair, and a mite bit ridiculous with the now vast amount of material on the web to twice nominate a short unfinished work for the Eisner award."

First of all, that's a ridiculous bitch to pitch. The length of a story or an installment of a story has little to do with its quality. The Eisner Awards at least recognize this, and have nominated stories that appeared on the dust jackets of books. That's right, on the dust jackets. Why, they even regularly give out awards in a category for short stories. If you want to complain about a webcomic being nominated, explain why it's a horrible comic. Or point to obvious webcomics that are clearly far better. But don't just point to how short the comic is or how slowly the artist works. Length and speed might count for a lot for the AVN awards, but it shouldn't count for shit for a comics award.

Now, I haven't even read ojingogo; maybe it's horrible and nobody wants to come out and say it. But perhaps this is worth stating: In case nobody's figured it out yet, the Eisner awards are incredibly comic book centric. Take a look at the full list of nominees here. Hey, they've got about 25 categories for books, and one for "Digital Comics." Maybe that's a sign that they know more about comics in books then they do about comics on the web? Maybe it's not just a coincidence that the Eisner nominations for digital comics go predominately to people who are in the printed Flight anthology. Because, hey, these are book people. They've jammed every single webcomic, no matter its form or function, into a single category. Being surprised that these comic book people aren't up to date on the latest things that the webcomic people are doing is like being surprised that webcomics people aren't up to date on the latest in web animation. Like when Xerexes busts off a hot news tip this week about 30-second animated movie parodies starring bunnies. Yes, that's right, the Sci Fi channel's site of the week for August 2, 2004 finally made it to the premiere news site for web comics this past week. Right before the outraged post on "Why can't people who are totally into one medium more accurately judge another medium?"

Look, it's for the same reason newspaper comic artists like Tom Tomorrow will never win an Eisner Award no matter how good his comics are, unless he starts selling them in comic book shops next to Rob Zombie sattues and Star Trek trading cards. The Eisner's same pro-comic book bias that works against webcomics totally ignores newspaper comics. Simply put, one of our greatest comics artists ever, Charles Schulz, had about a zero chance of winning an Eisner until after he was dead and people like Fantagraphics collected his comics in big books and started shipping them out to stores that sell Spawn action figures and Fiend Folios.

It used to be that I gave a fuck when the Eisner Awards totally ignored webcomics, but now for some reason I can't even be bothered to go look at the webcomics they do nominate. Maybe my priorities have changed. Maybe for the worse. Maybe it's a good thing that other people are getting outraged on my behalf about every percieved slight to comics on the Internet, but I can't really get as interested in comics awards as I used to because I'm too busy making comics.

But at least the Eisners don't still have a category for "Best Hellboy Lunchbox" while totally ignoring webcomics.

And it's not like they took away Milli Vanilli's Grammy. That was cold.

Right?

UPDATE: It turns out I lied: I have read Ojingogo, I just blanked on the name because I'm shit with names some times. It's a damn good comic, which makes the people bitching about this even more off base. I hope it wins.
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Amber "glych" Greenlee[info]glych on April 10th, 2006 12:09 am (UTC)
On T., proclaiming yourself a world famous historian is very different than being one. I've told T. this. I've read Ojingogo...it's okay; I've read better. Copper deserves the nomination because it is quite good, but I have to admit I've not read much of the other 3 nominees.

I agree with you to a point; Excellent short stories are nominated and recieve awards from the Eisners, the judges themselves aren't webcomic-centric in their thinking and wouldn't know about this small fraction of the comics world as a whole, and if the work is good why should it matter how much work is produced? Most Eisner judges wouldn't consider looking to see when the majority of work was produced online probably, but T.'s missed the point he should have made in his frustration. If only 7-10 pages of a longer series were produced in a particular year it's hardly fair to those producing more, better work in that same year. There's a difference between quality and quantity. What the problem was, I'm sure, is that no one SUBMITTED their work to Eisners. I'm sure Fetus X would have been nominated as well if it were submitted, because it's unique, smart, insane, and would be considered "artsy" (The word in quotations because most Eisner judges wouldn't know what else to make of it). Ursula Vernon (Digger) submitted her work and was nominated for the "talent deserving wider recognition" catagory. But out of all of the submissions to the Eisner's this year, hardly any of it was for the Digital Comics catagory, and even still the judges only had a handful of strips to pick and choose from within it. The Eisner judges won't actively go looking for comics the same way that someone else will who reads webcomics actively will unless it's of profound interest to them... which it isn't. T. expects them to simply "discover" the best, I think. He made the same mistake with edits for his "history" expecting people to seek him out and correct him on points he was inaccurate on. It's egocentric, and completely unrealistic of him to do so. If he got all butt-hurt about other webcomics not being picked, he should submit them himself before the next deadline.

I myself did not submit my own work because I'm timing it with the release of the next print collection (because the Eisners are print-centric).

yeah...my 2 cents.

-glych
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 01:36 am (UTC)
If only 7-10 pages of a longer series were produced in a particular year it's hardly fair to those producing more, better work in that same year.

True, and that's really the only point you can make when trying to argue about Award nominations. Candidate X is better than Candidate Y.

But Webcomics present some weird challenges for these types of awards. Webcomics are often in this strange spot of perpetually being new. They're not like comic books that are new and on the shelf for just a month and then get moved off to the back-issue bin somewhere as soon as their cover date is too old; webcomics are always on the damn shelf and ready to be read. So, somebody can stumble on to them and say "Hey, look at these new comics someone made three years ago." It's like the search for a publisher that takes place for print comics has, in webcomics, been replaced by the search for an audience. In print comics, the date a comic reaches the store is the important date; that is, the date it reaches the audience. But in webcomics the date it reaches in audience is constantly in flux, or constatntly in the now, so instead people are trying to look at the date the artist finished creating the comic. And of course "date artist completed comic" and "date audience received comic" are two very different things.

Another factor that comes into play is that comic books have clear beginings and ends (the first page and the last page), even if that's just a clear begining and end to a single chapter, whereas webcomics often do not. Many webcomics are in this constant state of being a work in progress, but if the Eisners wait until those works in progress are complete before they judge them then they'd have to largely ignore these wonderful, massive, on-going stories. For example, if Cerebus was a webcomic, at what point could you judge it? After it's finally finished? And then you're right back to 'But in the year it was finished they only did 50 pages, but this other comic did a hundred pages."

In the end, it's up to the judges to judge. You're right in that making sure they've got good comics to judge is important, but honestly I'm not sure the one-minute glance they have to give every webcomic makes that even a realistic solution. I suspect most judges are voting on a "Yeah, I've read that" or at least a "Yeah, I've heard of that" basis, not a "I'm going to sit down and read every comic book and webcomic produced in the last year" angle. Even taking the time to completely read and think about and compare just every comic submitted to them seems like a Herculean task.

I'd say the solution would be to try to find judges that know their webcomics better, but when you've got 25 categories for books and 1 category for webcomics, I think it's pretty clear that getting anymore than 1 judge out of every 26 to be webcomics literate isn't going to be a priority.

So maybe the judges they do have will screw up every now and then, and somebody will be able to make a banner ad for their webcomic that says "Eisner-nominated" when they really don't deserve it. Big deal.

Anyway, you wrote a few things that make it sound like you know the ins and outs of the process this year, like "But out of all of the submissions to the Eisner's this year, hardly any of it was for the Digital Comics catagory." Were you involved, or are you just guessing?
Amber "glych" Greenlee[info]glych on April 10th, 2006 04:02 am (UTC)
:)

I've been a published comic artist for a few years now, despite my age. Since I've been going to the SDCC since the age of 5, many of the creators, editors, booth exhibitors, and patrons know me by sight and by name. I have a few friends who happen to be Eisner judges this year and several more who happen to work in the office that recieves submissions. I called up both of the judges I know and both said they can't answer any Eisner related questions until the awards are handed out, so I instead asked one of my friends (Clydene Knee) working at the front desk for the office recieving submissions.

I asked how many they recieved for the Digital Comics catagory, and she said they only recieved about 30 or so. For all of the Eisner submissions, she as well as a staff of about 5 others had to sift through, reading each one thuroughly, "weeding out the weaker submissions" (For example she went on for a time about this guy that had stapled his lined paper pencil original comic together and sent it in for best story. She said it was written in crayon and unlegible) until they gather anywhere between 20-50 for each catagory to go directly to the judges. Since the number was so low for the Digital Comics catagory, she said every single submissions reached the judges eyes. From several that she saw, only about 5 or 6 of them hit her as "professional" work. Now, Clydene is the furthest from what I would call an art or comic snob. She's an intelligent well read comic reader who has a giddy excitement for anything sequential. So for her to say as much to me, means that the selection of submissions this year was probably pretty poor. That's not to say there isn't good "digital work" out there, just that it wasn't submitted to the Eisners.

You make some valid points. When should the work be judged? When it's released or when it reaches it's audience? In the case of the Hugo awards (Science Fiction) some novels aren't nominated for years after they were originally written (the first Hugo award winner "The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester, for example, didn't recieve the award until 3 years later). Even Maus was in print for several years before it recieved nomination for and later the Pulitzer Prize. And interesting conundrum of webcomics, certainly. Neil Cohn (www.emaki.net) brought up another good point in the comments related to the Eisners news article on comixpedia.com that most of the work that's been nominated, aside from some downward scrolling, aren't really groundbreaking in their use of digital effects. That the majority of those nominated this year and last look just like print comics just on screen. He argues this is because of the Eisners' judges print comic bias and I feel he's onto something.

-glych
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 05:03 am (UTC)
Cool -- I thought maybe you might've been a judge or judging assistant this year or something. That's a shame about so few people entering their work -- a few years go I was entering other people's work in the standard categories just to try to raise the awareness level of the Eisner crew about webcomics. This year I didn't even enter my stuff -- it was on my list of things to do, but my hosting situation has been so bizarre the past year I wasn't even sure where I'd be this time of year. fetusx.com? ericmillikin.com? serializer.net? moderntales? keenspot? Who knew serializer would be down so long? God, I think it's been over a year.

Oh, and you can tell Clydene that there's nothing wrong with lined paper and crayons!!!

(no subject) - [info]glych on April 10th, 2006 05:23 pm (UTC) Expand
(no subject) - [info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 05:34 pm (UTC) Expand
[info]williamgeorge on April 10th, 2006 04:03 am (UTC)
On T., proclaiming yourself a world famous historian is very different than being one. I've told T. this.


I trust you immediately remembered that this claim was just something the ad copy writer at Antarctic Press made up after you wrote this, right?
Amber "glych" Greenlee[info]glych on April 10th, 2006 04:11 am (UTC)
I had forgotten that Anarctic created the terminology for him, true. I worked with Antarctic on "Warrior Nun Areala" back in the day... Antarctic adds lines like that a lot to the creative types working under them to try and boast their prestige... They came up with some colorful ones for me. T. himself has used the term. Repeating an untrue statement doesn't immediately make it true.

We talked about a lot concerning his book; I even went through and edited it like so many others in this field to try and get it as accurate as possible. Because of time contraint, T. said he was unable to add dates to the book. And, like I said to him, a history book without dates is hardly a history at all.

-glych
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tcampbell1000[info]tcampbell1000 on April 10th, 2006 06:44 am (UTC)
If you read my post, Glych, I say:

"The fault is certainly not Forsythe's. I think some of it can be laid at the feet of webcartoonists, who probably didn't send in their material as readily as they did last year."

And:

"Maybe, MAYBE, if those seven pages represented a minicomic of haiku-like brilliance in and of themselves, but they're not a beginning, and they're not an ending. They're just... more middle."

Whereas JELLABY produced more than 22 pages in a year, and COPPER and PVP produce lots of little stories, not one big story.

There is certainly a difference between quality and quantity but I think there has to be a lower limit of quantity somewhere. Right now, as far as I can tell, there isn't.
Amber "glych" Greenlee[info]glych on April 10th, 2006 07:12 am (UTC)
In a reply Eric made on this topic, he made the good point that there's no set timeframe of when a work was produced and when a work reaches its audience or gains notice from (in this case) an Eisner judge. That because most webcomics are continued works through many years, it's difficult to judge them based on the merit of a single year when what might be created in one year is only part of a greater whole. I think this is a perfect example of how that can make things complicated. I did read your posts, and I don't think they're cannon based upon Eric's points.

If the Eisner's added a special rule to the Digital Comics catagory saying, say, "most or all of a comic has to be completed within the year bring judged" Pennie and Aggie (for example) would go out the window, no matter how many updates it would have in a particular year simply for the length of its existence online. Again, I feel the point you failed to make was that more people should have submitted their works. I'm sure you didn't. Francis Lee told me once "Go to the world, don't wait for the world to come to you. If you don't go out there to show what you've got, how will people ever know what you have to show?"

-glych
(no subject) - [info]tcampbell1000 on April 10th, 2006 07:56 am (UTC) Expand
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Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 07:29 am (UTC)
There is certainly a difference between quality and quantity but I think there has to be a lower limit of quantity somewhere. Right now, as far as I can tell, there isn't.

I'm not sure seven pages would fall outside the "lower limit of quantity" they've set up. If the digital comics category is meant to include comics of all genres, shapes and sizes (that is, it's meant to include the digital version of all the print categories including "Best serialized story, "Best continuing series," "Best short story," etc.) then I'd think seven pages is definitely acceptable. Until they have "Best Digital Short Story" vs. "best Continuing Digital Series," complaints that webcomics of different lengths and formats are being judged in the same category are kind of silly. Like I said earlier, this is the crew that nominated Chris Ware for a comic he did on a book jacket. If it's good, it's good, whether it's 7 pages or 365 daily comic strips. In a better world they might have multiple categories for webcomics, but unless they start receiving more than a few dozen submissions I don't think that's going to happen.
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Graveyard Greg[info]graveyardgreg on April 10th, 2006 01:46 am (UTC)
I didn't even know they were accepting nominations. Shows how much I pay attention.
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 03:24 am (UTC)
Yeah - somebody tipped me off about it, and I thought about submitting my shit, but I don't even know what URL my comics are going to be at next month. I put "Enter Esiners" on my "to do" list months ago, and it's still buried there somewhere ...
Shaenon K. Garrity: The Hell?[info]shaenon on April 10th, 2006 02:51 am (UTC)
Copper only added about nine pages last year. So why is ojingogo the one these guys are bitching about? Presumably because Kazu is well-known in the webcomics community, and the ojingogo guy (his name is Matthew Forsythe, incidentally) isn't. He got nominated because he was smart enough to submit work. He submits ojingogo to all the awards with a webcomics category (which, for the record, is now all three of the major print comics awards). He submitted to the Ignatzes last year when I was a judge.

Webcartoonists, pay attention: if you have good work and you submit it to these awards, you stand a strong chance of being nominated. The judges generally don't know squat about webcomics, so they have no preconceptions about which comics are the "big names." If they like your work, they'll consider nominating it, even if you're nobody with ten pageviews and no merchandise. Also, not that many webcartoonists submit their work. Webcartoonists suck at self-promotion. Except for Kazu's crowd, apparently, since three of them scored Eisner noms: Kazu, Forsythe, and Kean Soo. Learn from these men.
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 03:17 am (UTC)
Shaenon, there is much wisdom in your two paragrpahs. I'd like to praise you for that, but come on, only two paragraphs? You're obviously on the wrong side of the Quantity/Quality Axis of Evil here. How can I praise your two paragraphs when so many other have written six paragraphs?

But you may have hit upon the reason why I find it hard to get excited about this: I didn't bother to enter my own comics, so I find it difficult to get to pissed that somebody else got nominated. That's a bit like me getting pissed because the Miss America judges snubbed me again this year, when I never even bothered to enter the Miss Michigan pageant.

Either that or I didn't enter my own comics because I really didn't give a fuck about the Eisner's enough this year to fill out a form or send an e-mail or whatever it was we were supposed to do. I didn't care when it was time to submit, and I don't really care now that the nominations have come out.

And, yeah, I haven't read Forsythe's comic, but bitching about his award nomination sesm like a dick thing to do. Congratulations Matt! I hope you win.
[info]williamgeorge on April 10th, 2006 04:14 am (UTC)
I saw the original version of T's post about it and at the time it seems everyone was under the impression Ojingogo had only updated two pages since the last nomination.

Obviously T and Xaviar can defend themselves, but I figure they made their statements before knowing all of the facts (On the internet?! NOES!) and given the screaming hysteria that's created when someone changes their mind and deletes something they know to be stupid, they just had no choice but to push on through.

Webcartoonists suck at self-promotion.

Well, in our world, self-promotion is getting together with some like-minded people and picking on someone. I don't think the Eisner people work that way unless it's Rob Liefeld
tcampbell1000[info]tcampbell1000 on April 10th, 2006 06:56 am (UTC)
Nah...
Nah, I still think seven pages of middle is too few. It's the paucity COMBINED with the incompleteness that puts it over the top for me. If it had turned out that Matt put up, say, more than ten pages (your limit may vary), then I would have just deleted the post and said "apparently, I'm an idiot." I'm less upset than I was when I thought it was two pages, but the point still stands.
Re: Nah... - (Anonymous) on April 10th, 2006 07:07 am (UTC) Expand
tcampbell1000[info]tcampbell1000 on April 10th, 2006 06:51 am (UTC)
As usual, Shaenon, perceptive and well-spoken. I suspect you're right that Matthew gets a harder time because Kazu is better known. But here's what I said:

"Kazu Kibushi's Copper may be in trouble here, too-- my memory isn't as crystal clear for that one, but I'm pretty sure he did not more than ten strips last year. We might let Kazu slide because his strips are elaborate, posterrific productions, far more involved than a newspaper daily.

But ojingogo's seven pages are scarcely more elaborate than what you'd expect from seven pages of an indie comic book..."

I should have also said that each COPPER is a mini-story on its own, rather than a frustratingly incomplete work like ojingogo.

And yes, webcartoonists oh so suck at self-promotion, and yes, we could all stand to learn from Kazu's crew.
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 05:08 pm (UTC)
I should have also said that each COPPER is a mini-story on its own, rather than a frustratingly incomplete work like ojingogo.

I'm really not sure why you think that Ojingogo's installments are not "each ... a mini-story on its own." Why, for example, is http://comingupforair.net/comics/ojingogo_17.html not "a mini-story on its own"?

If you find Ojingogo "frustratingly incomplete" now, I'm guessing you'll find it "frustratingly complete" if it's ever "completed." I don't think Ojingogo is ever going to suddenly turn into a nice, more traditional three-act structure thatyou seem to be looking for. Which makes it sound like your problem with Ojingogo might have less to do with it being "frustratingly incomplete," and more to do with you just finding its type of story-telling to be "frustrating"?


(no subject) - [info]tcampbell1000 on April 10th, 2006 06:16 pm (UTC) Expand
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Wednesday: terror[info]weds on April 10th, 2006 03:22 pm (UTC)
Webcartoonists suck at self-promotion.

In terms of quantity or grace? The sheer weight of the former makes me cringe some days.
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 04:57 pm (UTC)
Again, it's that quantity/quality divide! Here you are drowning under graceless self-promrotion, and over there the Eisner judges only have a few dozen entries ...
Matt: follow through[info]mattbayne on April 10th, 2006 04:20 am (UTC)
Oingojo or whatever is actually a good read. I'd dsecribe it as a stream of consciousness of chibi cutesy stuff drawn like Miyazaki's Nausicaa comic. He pulls from a lot of pop-culture stuff, like domo-kun or whatever. Anyway, I think it is good enough to be on the list. Anyway, if nothing else, it is very... eisnery.
Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 04:41 am (UTC)
OK, I just went to check it out, and it jogged my memory -- I have read this before (I'm shit with names sometimes, including, apparently, titles of webcomics I read that one night). And you're right, Ojingogo is good shit -- it's like Jim Woodring draws Domo-Kuns. I mean come on, there's a tentacle attacking a bird right there on page one. What are these people bitching about?
Greg Carter: Neko - fruits basket[info]gregusa on April 10th, 2006 03:11 pm (UTC)
I can't get worked up over their choices considering how few submissions they recieved. Actually I expect these award schemes to suck anyway. I've never seen most of the movies nominated for oscars either. But I've seen most of the ones nominated for the Independant Spirit awards so you can see my perspective on awards.

I would only think number of updates would matter if something was completed in those pages. Anything. Not necessarily the whole comic obviously, but rules are needed that define what an eligible "piece" of work would be. So questions like "Would a kick-ass scene that covers three or four pages qualify, or would it have to be a larger arc or mini-arc?" could be dealt with. Would it be qualified merely by a minimum number of pages or would a subjective decision on whether anything progressed enough to be judged in a reasonable manner be the basis.

I'm in no danger of having anything involved anytime soon so I'm willing to wait with panties unbunched for a few years while the details on stuff like this is worked out. These are print people trying to deal with a newfangled form here. The webcomic kids aren't going to get off their lawn so they are doing what they can.


tcampbell1000[info]tcampbell1000 on April 10th, 2006 03:35 pm (UTC)
Agreed-- but I think calling attention to their mistakes and questionable calls is part of the working-out process. I think the awards will be better in a few years if we speak out now when something seems off-kilter.
Greg Carter[info]gregusa on April 10th, 2006 03:53 pm (UTC)
Oh yeah. Which is why I think the level of screeching in several places *cough*ComixPedia*cough* was uncalled for. Especially bashing the comics themselves. Having reasonable discussions like the one here to work out some ideas is the best way. It's easier to get the people that will be making the decisions to read them and start pondering changes.

And really, if a creator feels dissed, well, this kind of award is like sports - there's always next year. This was also a submit yourself deal so I say kudos to the folks that did submit - no matter what quality their comic is. It's like the lottery - you can't win unless you play. ;)
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Eric M[info]ericmonster on April 10th, 2006 09:20 pm (UTC)
tcampbell1000 wrote: "That's the way I feel about seven pages that are neither a beginning nor an end-- they're half a thought. And I simply refuse to believe that, even in the small selection the judges got, there were not four or five fully formed thoughts superior to half a thought."

For the sake of discussion, let's assume labeling ojingogo a "half thought" is correct. Certainly you agree that some "half thoughts" are better than some "fully formed thoughts"? Take the middle half of the first half of Kill Bill (what's that, a quarter thought?) and compare to a fully formed Gigli, for example. I think the title sequence of Kill Bill would probably beat out quite a few "fully formed" films at a hypothetical fim festival.

So, given that some "half thoughts" are better than some "fully formed thoughts, what you're left with is that you suspect that better comics than ojingogo were entered, but the judges (who actually know what was entered) disagree with you?

That doesn't sound like you've got much.