Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), the annual four-day showcase for cartoon art, has announced that former Publishers Weekly senior news editor Calvin Reid is the recipient of this year's Tom Spurgeon Award.
In addition to his role as senior news editor, Reid also worked as editor of PW Comics World, PW’s online coverage of the comics and graphic novel marketplace, and editor of The Fanatic, PW’s bimonthly e-newsletter on comics and pop culture. He is currently cohost of More to Come, PW’s weekly podcast on comics and graphic novel publishing.
Reid joined PW in 1987 and was instrumental to the expansion of the magazine's coverage of comics and graphic novels. In 2006, he received the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award from San Diego Comic-Con International in recognition of his efforts to raise the profile of graphic novel publishing in the book trade.
The Spurgeon Award honors non-cartoonists who have made substantial contributions to the field of comics and is named after Tom Spurgeon, a writer, historian, and champion of comic arts who served as CXC’s founding executive director.
“This is a terrific honor and I can't tell you how much it means to me,” said Reid in a statement. “It's even more meaningful to get an award named after Tom Spurgeon, who went out of his way to make sure I was able to attend CXC in the first place.”
“Calvin was one of the very first grown-ups to get that comics are an art form, not a genre; they are a medium of literature,” said Vijaya Iyer, Cartoon Books publisher and CXC co-founder, in a statement. “It took a pivotal figure like Calvin Reid to not only recognize the value of comics and graphic novels, but to use his position as a writer at the most important book trade magazine, Publishers Weekly, to shout it from the mountain top!”
“I want new readers (as well as comics artists) to know that the world of comics they live in now is very different than it used to be,” Reid continued. “It’s a world of indie, literary comics, superhero, manga, Webtoon, just an endless variety of genre comics of all types for all kinds of readers. And that I was lucky and proud to be able to help bring about some of that change and growth in the marketplace.”
