2009 Eisner Nominees

My initial, off the cuff thoughts on this year's list:

Lots of people whose work I admire and even like. Sacco, Ware, Barry, pretty strong mainstream names in there for the usual mainstream-dominated categories, not too many clunkers or personal judge-favored fluff I noticed, I found this year's list pretty interesting and credible. At least, not sick-inducing, which is welcome for a change. FOlks will argue and sneer, but I do think this year is easier on the brain than many a year.

The humor category has some real low-selling, obscure titles that only cartoonists seem to read/recognize. Pretty interesting, usually there are some "tweener" titles like Bone or The Goon in there, genre titles with humorous overtones that have stronger sales and followings and usually murder the competition in the voting Not knocking that or those titles, just saying. Rare to see actual all-humor titles, and nothing by major names that I recall. The Herbie Archives nomination in the category rankles a bit, it's old work, and I don't like seeing collected work up against new humor work, even when it was my own work (The second Dork collection got a humor nomination, and it seemed "wrong", as it was old work up against new. That's what collected editions categories are for, and Herbie did cop a nom in one of those reprint categories, so -? Still, if it's gotta be, better it be Herbie).

Is Thor really that great? Really? I'm just wondering, haven't read it, can't bring myself to. Thor? Okay, I'll have to take someone's word on it. Verily and all that.

Holy shit, the newspaper strip archival category is a clusterfuck of awesome. I mean, really. I knock out Little Nemo only because it's volume two and there's stiff competition...Feiffer, Gray, Maldin...the Sickles book...hmmm. That Maldin collection is a beautiful piece of work featuring beautiful work. I may have to go with that, and Covey for designing it. The Sickles book is terrific as well. Wow. This category is where my comics heart lies these days, its the only category in which I own all the titles nominated, so, nice to see.

No love for Love and Rockets vol 1? Really? Wow. How we can so often take Los Bros for granted is beyond me.

Who the fuck can afford to read everything on this list? More and more the better read/better selling seem to have a better shot, because numbers on some of the obscure titles are so, so low nowadays. At least, that's my worry. But that's how awards often swing. Still, a lot of interesting, good and sometimes exceptional stuff on the list. You could have a worse library on a desert island.

On a personal note: Congratulations to Jill Thompson for her nomination for her painted work on the Magic Trixie series. And to Scott Allie and Sierra Hahn for their project(s) nominations. Congrats to SLG for the Chumble Spuzz nom. Congrats to Andi Watson for his nomination.

Tom Spurgeon has the list of nominees here at the Comics Reporter.