Willingham had been working in the indies, mostly, for some time, going back to Elementals. He was also doing quite a bit of non-comics work. He had also been writing some stuff for DC's hero books; so, not exactly out of nowhere. With Fables, I think he finally found the right vehicle for the time and place.

Lynda Barry had been around a while. I've never really gravitated towards her stuff, partially due to her visual style, partially because it just never clicked with me. Shiga is not a name I recognize.

Amazing Screw-on Head was a fun title.

LOEG Vol 2 was the pinnacle of the series, to me, as it had everything I loved about the series and concept, without much of the more esoteric and downright dull stuff that filtered in later. It also went nuts with the easter eggs.

My only other major interest in the nominated works was Francois Schuiten's Invisible Frontier. The book was gorgeous, like all of his works, though he excelled on this one. The story was interesting too, as a cartographer deals with political revisionism, as it tries to reshape geography. It kind of shows how politics can affect what seems to be pure technical work and serves well as a metaphor for the problems of modern political discourse.

Show me where in the rule book it says you can't hide in the mascot costume.........

Alan Moore keeps winning because the ABC line was so good; there was something for everyone and it was fun! That stood out.

Rucka is a better writer than Bendis, in my opinion, with more of his own style, which is why I think he won. Also, he was writing crime fiction in a superhero world; Bendis was doing superhero stuff, when crime fiction was a more natural fit. Powers, in my opinion, was has best superhero-related material, since it was still using a crime fiction structure. Rucka was doing a police procedural, with Gotham Central.

The Graphic Album category really shows the influence of the trade book market on that material, vs comic shops. Blankets and the other nominees were all big sellers in bookstores and only The Fixer wasn't published through a major book publisher (iBooks was Byron Preiss, but distributed by Pocket Books, which was a division of Simon & Schuster) Drawn & Quarterly did have decent book distribution and our graphic novel buyer, at Barnes & Noble, stocked some of those, but not much Joe Sacco (in my area, anyway). Blankets was a perennial seller for us. Persepolis would become a very big deal and we carried it in our biography section, along with Maus and Alison Bechdel's personal work (Dyke's to Watch Out For material was carried in our Gay & Lesbian section). We had Blacksad, which is where I discovered it and fell in love with it. It would have been my personal choice, for album and Foreign Material.

This was a good time for foreign material. Manga was dominating thing and selling more outside of comic shops. DC's distribution deal with Humanoids brought a lot of European material, including the Freddy Lombad books mentioned, from Yves Charland. They also reprinted Jodorowsky's Incal and White Lama, plus most of Enki Bilal's major works, including the collected Nikopol Trilogy.

Manga's dominance probably motivated the induction of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima to the Hall of Fame, based on their seminal Lone Wolf and Cub.

Interesting to note one of the nominees for Best Humor Publication: Birth of a Nation, by Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker. This was a satirical graphic novel, where the city of East St Louis (on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, across from St Louis, MO), secedes from the Union, because of the corruption within the State and Federal governments, which ignores the plight of the impoverished city. McGruder was the creator of the comic strip Boondocks and had not, to my knowledge, worked in comic books. Hudlin was well known in comics, having written Black Panther, for Marvel, including the character's marriage to Storm. He directed several films, including House Party, Boomerang, and Bebe's Kids. He also produced and directed for The Bernie Mac Show. He was a native of East St Louis and his experiences inspired House Party and elements of the graphic novel. The book took the premise of a contested election, as in 2000 and a president who ignores the inner cities, leading to the city seceding. It was one that probably had a higher profile in bookstores, where McGruder's Boondocks collections were strong sellers, than in comic shops.

The Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts reprints get some lovin', which was deserved. They were nice editions, reprinting the entire 50 years of the strip, where previous books had predominantly been themed collections or "best of" types of books. I also see Locas nominated, for Fantagraphics, which collected the entire run of Jaime Hernadez's Maggie & Hopey stories, in one huge volume. Those were my favorite pieces and I bought that as soon as it came out.

I see that the nomination records haven't been update, since it lists Doc Frankenstein as being by the Wachowski "Brothers," rather than the now-more correct "Siblings."

The Adv of the Escapist was a terrific series and I loved the work down by the variety of artists.

In regards Tezuka's Buddha work; I believe it was the first time it was published in the US, in an English translation. Several of Tezuka's works got first time publication in the US, during the manga boom. Also nominated was Barefoot Gen (by Keiji Nakazawa, based on his personal experiences, at Hiroshima), which dates back to 1973. There had been an attempt to publish it in the US, via EduComics, but it didn't prove popular enough to continue, beyond 2 volumes.

Jon Cooke's The Comic Artist continues to dominate the Comic Periodical category. It was a great series, particularly its extensive looks at some of the smaller publishers of the comics industry, including Western (both the Dell and Gold Key phases), Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, and Harvey.

I think the Reality-Based category is a nod to the increase in alternative comics and the influence of bookstores and internet bookselling opening up new avenues for those creators. We got a lot of that kind of thing, at Barnes & Noble and media outlets like NPR were all over that kind of thing. DC was still pretty strong in their trade programs; but Marvel sucked, as they would do one printing and let it sell out and not go back to press. They also put out a lot of shoddy work, with frequent bad bindings on their trades. The American Bookseller Association put out public pleas to Marvel to reprint more and go back to press, as there was a proven audience, but they were focused so heavily on the Direct Market. DC had cultivated the book market, since the late 80s and kept their stuff in print (as much to F with Alan Moore as to meet perpetual demand).

I'm also not big on Astonishing X-Men. It's fine and seems rather like Claremont, with Whedon basically doing his Claremont X-Men fan fiction. I have only skimmed Morrison's X-Men; but, he seemed to have a more unique take on things, by comparison. That said, I have never understood the attraction to the whole Seven Soldiers project, as it really did nothing for me. All-Star Superman was more my cup of tea. I suppose part of it is the weirdness for weirdness sake element of Seven Soldiers, which is often a part of Morrison's work that loses me.

As far as Moore goes, I don't see anything fishy, as Top Ten: The Forty Niners was that good. Also, looking at how the Eisners tended to go, it encapsulates a lot of the medium's history, the types of stories that have had enduring appeal, and some terrific characters. Of the other nominees, Brian K Vaughn is the one I would vote for, as an alternate recipient. Ellis is another who seems more a collection of influences than an evolution. Moore seems to distill his influences into something that is his own, while Ellis and Morrison, I find, are less able to do that. They do interesting things in their work and it is quite enjoyable; but, like a Tarantino film, I spend as much time picking out the influences , if not more, than reading their take on things. I love Planetary; but the part that doesn't seem like Phillip Jose Farmer is pretty much the same thing he did in Authority and Stormwatch (especially his vaguely defined wonder powers of the characters).

I love Darrow's work, but also haven't read Darrow's Shaolin Cowboy. I believe I have some digital files of some of it. Doc Frankenstein was the one that sounded interesting to me, as a concept, from the Burly Man releases; but, I haven't looked at it, either.

Gee, what a surprise, a Calvin & Hobbes complete collection wins an award for archival project. I love having it all together; but, those volumes are really unwieldy and the weight puts too much stress on the binding. The Peanuts collections were a better formatting of the material. I think the Calvin Collection would have been better by making it 5 volumes, instead of 3 and reducing the thickness of the individual volumes.

By this point, I am almost exclusively reading graphic novels and trade collections and no longer have a comic subscription. It was like I was on a comic methadone program, for a while, as I was getting fewer and fewer books each week and started going to the comic shop every other week, to every few weeks and finally just told my local to cancel me as a subscriber, as so little was coming out that I needed it held. My employee discount was a bit deeper than the comic shop subscriber discount, so there was little point. I could keep track of releases with the online version of Previews and then reserve copies in our store ordering system. Most of what I was getting was from Cinebook, anyway.