Harveys Honor Best Comics
Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon’s Pride of Baghdad (DC) was named best original graphic album; Kazu Kibuishi’s Flight Vol. 3 (Ballantine) was named best anthology and D&Q managed to win the Harvey twice when Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old In Tokyo and Tove Jansson’s Moomin tied for best foreign reprint at the Harvey Awards, held during the Baltimore Comic-con this past weekend.
Hosted by cartoonist Kyle Baker, this year’s Harvey Awards, named after the legendary EC Comics and Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman, also featured Groo creator and industry favorite Sergio Aragones as featured speaker. Other book-oriented awards included best historical presentation for Dan Nadel’s Art Out of Time (Abrams); Darwyn Cooke’s Absolute New Frontier (DC) was named best reprint graphic album; and Fantagraphic’s The Complete Peanuts was awarded a Harvey for best domestic reprint. In addition Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls (Top Shelf) was given a special award for excellence; the HERO initiative award went to Joe Kubert and Bryan Lee O’Malley was given a special award for humor. For a complete list of the 2007 Harvey Awards winners check out The Harvey Awards website and PW The Beat.
Making Comics Wins Quill Award
Scott McCloud's Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels won the 2007 Quill Award in the Graphic Novel Category. A list of all the winners can be seen at the Quill Awards' website. The public can still vote on the Book of the Year. The Quills will be awarded at a gala ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York City on Oct. 22. The ceremony will be broadcast on NBC on Sat. Oct. 27.
MoCCA Book Club
The Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art is starting a graphic novel book club that will meet on Mondays, once a month. The group will be moderated by Janna Morishima, director of the Diamond Kids Group. The first MoCCA book club will be held on September 24th, and the book discussed will be Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. The meeting will begin at 6:30 PM at the MoCCA Gallery. The book club is pay what you wish. Other books that will be discussed in later months are Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels and Azuma Kiyohiko's Yotsuba&!. Book selections for the club will be diverse to encompass the various graphic novel genres and styles. More information about the book club and other MoCCA events can be found at the museum's website.
Webcomics at MoCCA
The Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art is showing a new exhibit, "Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics." The curator of the exhibit by Jennifer Babcock, the artist of the webcomic C'est La Vie, and the exhibit features original artwork, prints, and digital displays from Penny Arcade, Diesel Sweeties, Mom's Cancer, Achewood, Scott McCloud's My Obsession with Chess, and many other webcomics. The exhibit also includes an installment of MoCCA's New York Artist Showcase featuring the NYC webcomics collective, ACT-I-VATE. The show opening will be held Thursday September 13th at 7PM; admission is $10. The exhibit will remain up until January 14, 2008. More information about MoCCA can be found at the museum's website.
New Cancer Vixen Website
Marisa Acocella Marchetto, New Yorker cartoonist and author of Cancer Vixen, a memoir-in-comics of how she managed to survive breast cancer and get married, has launched a new website and blog. Marchetto hopes the blog will serve as a forum "about how to kick any kind of adversity in the butt." The site also offers information on how to donate to the Cancer Vixen Fund, an ongoing effort to raise money to support mammogram programs.
G4’s Fresh Ink Online
Hosted by G4TV comics expert Blair Butler, Fresh Ink, the comics segment of Attack of the Show, G4TV’s technology and pop culture variety show, doesn’t get quite the airtime that it used to. So the segment has been shifted online to the G4TV website. There’s a new segment every week on Friday.
Comics Reporter on Comics Shops
It’s long, detailed and passionate. Tom Spurgeon takes a good long look at the comics shop market and tells why it definitely still matters.
