Best Graphic Story - where do we go from here?

[ajr]

Taking it as axiomatic that the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story is broken, the following questions arise:

Can it be fixed? How can it be fixed? Should we even be trying to fix it?

Comments

[coalescent]

Slightly devil's advocate question: why do you think the Eisners don't have an sf/f category, and would adding such a category be sufficient for your third solution or do you envisage a standalone award coming from within the sf community?

[ajr]

why do you think the Eisners don't have an sf/f category and would adding such a category be sufficient for your third solution

For the same reason they don't have a crime category, or a romance category, or a superhero category. They hand out their awards mostly based on format rather than content. It's an egalitarian approach, and it seems to work for them.

Adding a category to the Eisners therefore wouldn't work, I believe, as it wouldn't fit in with the general make-up of their awards. After all, it has already been demonstrated that SF&F comics have done very well in being nominated this year - why, then, create a ghetto for them to get shoved back into?

or do you envisage a standalone award coming from within the sf community?I think an award from within the sf community, standalone or spun-off from/connected to an existing one, would be what I would like to see succeeding. Rightly or wrongly, I think having a body from within SF saying "These comics are good SF" would hold more weight than having the Eisners add a category

[jamesb]

Hi my name is James Bacon, and I read comics, and like the Hugo's. A mate pointed me here

Reply - part 1

[ajr]

Hi James. Thanks for your comment. We've met in passing a couple of times, I believe, though I don't think we've actually talked, including at the Eastercon just past.

Anyway, on with the show!

I need to mull over what you are saying here.

No worries. If I'd add one thing to the above which I didn't do when I wrote it, it's that a large part of it is me thinking out loud, so if I wander at points, or (god forbid) appear to contradict myself at any point, that'll be why.

Kevin Standlee and Cheryl Morgan do not control the Hugos. In actual fact, Kevin has helped me bring issues to the Business meeting, as I occassionally have a desire to effect change, and was very neutral. (not Hugo, but worldcon related)

They may have an opinion on this award, that's fair enough.

It may help if you go back and read this related post and its comments, which I wrote last year in the immediate aftermath of finding out what the nominations were for the inaugural Best Graphic Story award. I would add that my views now aren't exactly the same as my

Re: Reply - part 1

[jamesb]

Yes, I imagine if I saw your photo, or met you, I would recognise you, but well, anyone with a Charleys War icon is pretty cool in my book

Reply - part 2

[ajr]

I can see some of the sense of the 'Graphic Novel' suggestion, but as a comic reader, fear that it may miss many titles, worthy titles, that never get collected.

This is something I have considered, but ultimately I do believe that missing a few titles this way is worth it in order to reduce confusion. The thing I keep coming up against, is that I want to be in a position where, when people ask me to recommend books they might read with a view to Hugo nominating if they're worthy, I can genuinely just give them the books and let them go, instead of having to say "Well, this is good, but I'm damned if I know how to tell you to nominate it, when you could do so as a single issue, a collection, or the series as a whole" (assuming a finished series). To me, that's not useful, and contributes to splitting the vote in a way that I believe can be entirely avoidable

[jamesb]

Conitinued thinking