Harveys Discussion on SF Awards Watch Site

Sunday/Monday I'll be participating in a discussion about the Harvey Awards on the SF Awards Watch Site. The Harveys are given out this weekend. In prep for that, I'm posting my thoughts about the finalists, below, after the cut.And check out the SF Awards Watch Site Sunday/Monday for more discussion...JeffOverall, the Harvey Award Nominees seem much more conservative than the Eisner Award Nominees this year. This seems especially true in the Best Writer category, for example, where you have not one but two Gemstone Publishing items. Two great genre offerings, Fables and Scarlet Traces, get no love. This effect is magnified under the Best Artist category, where Gemstone's Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney Comics & Stories again get a double nod. It's actually quite funny to think of Renee French's The Ticking being judged in the artist category next to Uncle Scrooge. I don't know how you could possibly find any basis for comparison.And then we're on to Best Cartoonist, where again the Gemstone Duo pop up. Were Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney Comics & Stories truly so mind-blowingly good that they could single-handedly displace a mega-monolith like Alan Moore and especially Melinda Gebbie for her art? Apparently so. Apparently in years to come, we will be worshipping at the shrine of Uncle Scrooge while Moore and Gebbie and other sordid rabble like them find their names writ in water.I've long thought categories like Best Letterer, Best Inker, and Best Colorist should be decided by people in those fields, and I believe that's what happens with the Harveys, so I defer to their opinion. That said, just because American Born Chinese was bright doesn't mean it was necessarily the best color-wise. The marvelous use of color in graphic novels like The Left Bank Gang and Dungeon would get my vote over anything on this list.For cover artist, my two favorites on the list would have to be James Jean for Fables and J.G. Jones for 52. Jones did 52 covers, which is, in itself, an accomplishment, but many of them are very good, too.In Best New Talent, it's hard to find fault with any of it, except that it's all fairly random. I might have suggested A Late Freeze, by Danica Novgorodoff or The Preposterous Adventures of Ironhide Tom, by Joel Priddy, as alternatives or add-ons, however.Best New Series and Best Continuing or Limited Series are hard categories to judge, in my opinion. But I would've thought Gumby--a totally whacky and wonderful surprise--might've made it on the Best New Series list. I also liked Criminal. Of the material on the ballot, I did think Civil War was pretty inventive.I think it's with the Best Syndicated Strip or Panel category that the Harveys really begin to interest me. Here you've got a rich vein of material, and a category not covered by the Eisners. Doonesbury and Maakies are personal favorites here.Under Best Anthology, the Harveys make up for the Eisners not including Best American Comics in any category. I thought the fact that comics finally has a regular best-of series should be recognized by someone in the industry, and now it has been. Mome is also a great choice--really cool stuff. In addition, I like the inclusion of Flight 3, even though I thought the overall quality was down from the first two volumes. That said, there's a terrific subversion of fairy tale in Flight 3: "Old Oak Trees," by Tony Cliff.In the Best Graphic Album, Previously Published category, it'd be hard to not have put the excellent Castle Waiting and Absolute New Frontier on the ballot. Polly & the Pirates was also charming. However, two favorites, Truth Serum by John Adams--a wickedly funny and perverse take on superheroes--and Shadowlands by the great Kim Deitch didn't make it here.Fun Home by Bechtel would by my choice under Best Single Issue or Story, although I do wonder a bit why they bothered to put it here when it's also located in its more natural home under Best Graphic Novel, original. Anyway, this category is loaded with talent--from Ganges to Civil War to Mom's Cancer, and, even, yes, Pride of Baghdad, although I thought the fantasy element was overwrought.I also think that the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category is strong, with the wonderful Abandon the Old in Tokyo, Kampung Boy, and, especially, my one true love, forever, Tove Jansson's Moomin, an enduring classic that everyone should pick up.As for the Best Online Comics Work category, a slight slap on the wrist to awards administrators everywhere for even having this category, since most online strips eligible for the Harveys and the Eisners, for example, are just static strips scanned and put on the internet. There's no difference between most online strips and most hardcopy strips. Until there's some real differentiation between the two, or until "animation" is a category, a best online comics category really makes no hierarchical sense. That said, choices like the eccentric American Elf, The Chelation Kid, and Girl Genius are great.Now we come to the category that's like "best costumes"--the sop, in some cases, for the film, er, graphic novel that everybody thought looked great but no one wanted in the best film, er, graphic novel category. And the top honors for that go to Lost Girls by Moore and Gebbie. No one seems to have wanted to touch this one with a ten foot pole while wearing a Hazmat suit. Now, granted, as stories go, Lost Girls has some faults, but the Harveys deserve a real punch to the gut for not at least nominating Gebbie in the art category. This is, however, a solid category with a lot of good nominees.Just about everything that should be in Best Graphic Novel Original is there, except for A.L.I.E.E.E.N. by Lewis Trondheim, a deceptively simple tale of strange bunny things killing strange frog things. American Born Chinese going up against Billy Hazelnuts? Okay, sure. Again, let's try to imagine points of comparison. Bill Hazelnuts has flies for eyes and a cracked china doll for a companion. American Born Chinese is a sensitive sometimes moving tale of...well, okay, so you can see my point. Me, I say go for the guy with the flies for eyes. He'll tell you no lies. What he'll tell you, though, is that Fun Home by Alison Bechtel actually deserves to win in this category.Passing by Best Domestic Reprint Project, a title that sounds a bit like part of an old Stalinist five-year plan, we come to Special Award for Humor in Comics...where we meet again our old friend Uncle Scrooge, looking a bit shop-worn from being put through the wringer of all these categories, but still feisty. Okay, so there's some funny stuff here, but Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman's the most unique. Let's give the nod to it.The Harveys choose to end their list with Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation, although I'm willing to bet this isn't what they'll be ending their ceremony with...and I have to say, except for Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries 1900-1969, nothing in that list, from The Comics Journal to...wait for it...Gemstone Publishing's The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide...makes me salivate overly much.In summation, I feel faintly cheated by the sparse 21 categories, having been a judge for the Eisners with its 26. Moreover, I just don't think the Harveys did as good a job as the Eisners in seeking out unusual content. This is perhaps doubly perplexing because the Harveys are voted on by creators.Still, lots of things that should be represented are on the list of nominees, and it's good to see Brian Vaughn, who I think got shut out of the Eisners, get some nods here.I'm not going to make any predictions as to winners--it's a fool's game for me, as I'm rarely right. But congratulations to all of the nominees and to those not nominated, as well.