The Eisner Awards

As I said last night, one of the highlights of the San Diego Comic Con is giving out the Eisner Awards. I don't know if this could ever happen because there are too many competing interests, but it would be nice if the comics industry could agree on one award. As it is now, we've got the Eisners, named after Will Eisner; the Harveys, named after Harvey Kurtzman; and various others, such as the Wizard Fan Awards, named after Wizard magazine and voted by the fans. There's so much division that it's hard to figure out what's what. It reminds me somewhat of boxing, in which several organizations sponsor different championships so there are sometimes rival world heavyweight champions at the same time. In terms of comics, the Eisners are one of the big ones, though, so you have to pay attention to them.

The winners were fairly spread around this year, with few double winners. Kyle Baker won for Best Writer/Artist—Humor, and his series Plastic Man won Best Publication for a Younger Audience. Brian K. Vaughan won Best Writer, and his series Ex Machina won Best New Series. Eric Powell's The Goon won both Best Humor Publication and Best Continuing Series. You can get the whole rundown from Heidi at The Beat.

Michael Chabon Presents The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist won Best Anthology, beating out the comics issue of McSweeneys, edited by Chris Ware. Chabon accepted his award with the question, "Have you seen the McSweeney's?" Tom Spurgeon said that this sums up his own reaction to awards like these (scroll down to item #7).

It's not that what I feel is the best book as a critic never wins Eisners, but it's more like it seems that the Eisners are always given to whatever comic brings the most pleasure in any way as opposed to the one that reaches excellence, which is a perfectly fine standard to have as a reader and kind of a sad one to project as an industry.

He's got a point, but I'm not sure the Eisners are particularly different than the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, or whatever. It would be nice to celebrate excellence, though, wouldn't it?