CSotD: Comic Strips (and panels and whatever) of Their Day
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The Reubens were last night, and, while I don't think much of awards in general, I do like the idea of people getting together, particularly people who tend to otherwise work in well-lighted garrets, in isolation from anyone who does what they do.
And, while even a Pulitzer won't protect you from the beancounters these days when it comes to layoffs, awards are nice in a business that involves selling yourself to new clients. For one thing, an editor might be impressed that a strip won an award and, for another, it might cause the syndicate rep to show your work to editors a little more often and more enthusiastically.
Besides, a little attaboy is good for you once in awhile.
And the relevant awards this year (There are others. Here's the complete list.) were pretty much all ones that I liked. So the National Cartoonist Society voters chose wisely.
I say "pretty much" because the awards for online comics went to a pair I didn't know, but that I'm going to start following, since they look pretty good. So, you see, awards do matter!
This is "Untold Tales of Bigfoot," which took the prize for long-form comics.
And "Ten Cats" took the prize for short-form.
Dave Whamond of Reality Check won, not for that panel but in the category of Newspaper Illustration, but he's featured often enough here that I'm glad he won even though I don't do a blog called "Newspaper Illustration of the Day."
I do, however, often say how important an artist can be for helping a newspaper establish a local feel and following.
The winner for panels was Hilary Price of "Rhymes with Orange," which is one of a set of comics I have to guard against featuring here at least once a week. Her taste for silliness mixed with insight appeals to me, and some of those insights can be pretty profound.
Also she throws a good open studio in the fall, complete with leftover Halloween candy and some of the best book-signing in the business. Buy a book, get a bonus, custom cartoon on the flyleaf. Can't beat that.
The award for best comic strip went to "Red and Rover," by Brian Basset, an endearing daily dose of sweet nostalgia. It's set in a somewhat indefinite 50s/60s past and features a nice kid and a nice dog.
I was surprised, looking back through the archives, that it hasn't been featured here before, because it's a good strip, but I suppose it flies just an inch below my radar, often making me smile but never quite touching off a rant.
Which makes this a good time to recommend that, if you haven't been following it, you start. It's a worthwhile stop on the daily circuit. There are a lot of good comics I don't rant about.
On the other hand, here's another on the "I think you've used her work enough" list I keep in my head, and, in fact, I just did feature Jen Sorensen quite recently, which is the only reason I didn't blog on this current piece. But evidently the NCS voters read her stuff even when it isn't featured here, because they gave her the award for Editorial Cartooning, and it's well deserved.
She was on a panel at the convention, along with the aforementioned Hilary Price, as well as Lynn Johnston, Cathy Guisewite and Terri Libenson, on the topic of women and cartooning, and the best part about it was that the announcement of the panel sparked a complaint on one cartooning blog about someone who should have been included.
It's nice to see the numbers get high enough to make that an issue, and, in fact, another woman, Roz Chast, was honored for "gag cartoon" which are the one-offs you see in magazines rather than established, anchored features.
And I would add that, while I tend to think of Jen Sorensen and Matt Bors in the same category of "Younger Cartoonists With Real Perspective," and they often address the same issues from roughly the same perspective, I certainly see a gender difference within that perspective, and there's not a lot a self-deprecation or attempting to "throw like a guy" in her work.
It's not the number of women that matters nearly so much as the voices they add.
The big award of the night, the actual "Reuben" itsownself for cartoonist of the year was a tie this year, which has only happened once before, in 1968, when Johnny Hart and Pat Oliphant each took home a statuette.
This year, Rick Kirkman of "Baby Blues" tied for the honor along with …
… Brian Crane of "Pickles."
Which I guess means that, while NCS members really like creators of warm-hearted family strips, they're evenly split between whether those artists should depict relatively new parents or relatively old grandparents.
In any case, they like them, they really like them, and now everyone is going to go back to their garrets and get back to work, with or without plaques in hand.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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