The Quill Awards and the Graphic Novel Industry

Yesterday I came up with 10 gags that were good. (This means I thought up at least 15-20 others that were not very good. I find I always have to get the "garbage" out of my system to get get to the good stuff.) I drew up about 4 cartoons. I say "about" since I didn't like the way the first one came out and I might just toss it and redo it.

All in all, not a very interesting day to report about. No way I would win an award for this blog today.

Speaking of awards ....

Aside from entering my gerbil in the Lawrence, KS Deerfield Elementary School pet contest where I was awarded the "Smallest Pet" cup, I have never won anything.

Hmm. Technically, I didn't win anything in that instance really. My gerbil did. But that was 36 years ago, and he's dead and I'm not!

Ha ha ha!

You see? People start talking about awards and they just get all bent outta shape. Doug Marlette in his excellent IN YOUR FACE autobio comments that awards mean nothing and don't get hung up on them.

Yeah, OK, easy for him to say. He's GOT the Pulitzer.

I have been thinking about the Quill Awards, where friend Brian Fies was nominated in one of the categories. That was the reason he was in NYC this week. His graphic novel lost out to NARUTO VOLUME 7, which is telling.

Dirk Deppey writes:

The graphic novel has arrived, the American public is reading it, and its author is Japanese. Welcome to the 21st century.

I feel bad for my friend, and feel that MOM'S CANCER (as well as Alison Bechdel's FUN HOME, which was also nominated) is a more important book than NARUTO VOLUME 7. But these awards are not presided over by sage souls in an ivory tower, looking at metaphor and context, they are decided by mouse clicks over at The Quills Web site. And manga readers are good clickers!

And it helps that NARUTO is also on TV in a regular anime show.

Mr. Deppey:

The greater problem, however, is that there’s no center in the Direct Market. It’s too heavily skewed toward superheroes on the one side, and literary comics on the other.

One day, graphic novels might be like, well, like other books. You got funny ones and adventure ones and so on. But for now, with maybe a couple of exceptions like the LITTLE LULU reprints (which are GREAT!), there's either NARUTO or BATMAN in the Graphic Novel aisle.

Thanks to Mr. Deppey, I found out about Shaenon K. Garrity's LiveJournal site where she lists all-time favorite manga. I better catch up.