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I had the honour of being on the Joe Shuster Awards Nominating Committee twice now. The first time in 2007 and again in 2010. My area in both years was printed comic books & graphic novels and in this year English material in particular. Being on the nominating committee means reading every comic that a Canadian had a hand in creating for the year prior and picking the top creators in each category.
Doing this gives you an over all view of how Canadians are contributing creatively to comic books. You learn where the strengths and weaknesses are. The categories I was involved in this year was English Language Artist, Writer, Cartoonist (artist/writers), Colourist and Cover for print comics. I need to state that I was only 1 of several people on the nominating committee in both years. Like everybody else on the committee, I submit my top picks and who wins the award is decided in another way. In 2007 it was by fan voting, in 2010 there was a jury picking the winners.
Now I need to state in big blocky letters that these are strictly my opinions alone. They do not reflect the opinions of the Joe Shuster Awards, Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards, or anybody else involved with them. If you don't like what I'm about to write, get mad at me, not at them. They don't even know I'm writing this column. My e-mail is jcoville at kingston dot net.
First the Shania Twain. We've got a large quantity of really great artists. Not just one type of artist, either. Big name superhero artists (Steve McNiven, Stuart Immonen). Younger artists that are turning heads and making names for themselves (Francis Manapul, Karl Kershl). Long time veterans who may not make the headlines anymore but are still doing great work (Tom Grummet, John Byrne). Artists of high quality that just doesn't get much recognition in the direct market yet (Tom Fowler, Ramon Perez). Craftsmanship artists working on licensed titles and getting all the details right (Doug Wheatley). These are just some of the names I can give for these areas. There are awesome Canadians artists working in whatever area of the industry you can think of.
This category is only out done by our cartoonists. We've got a handful of the very best cartoonists in the world. If you are a comic fan and read Graphic Novels at all you probably own at least 1 book by a Canadian. Be it Darwyn Cooke, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Seth, Jeff Lemire, Chester Brown or a bunch of other people. While we don't have as many great cartoonists as we do great artists, the quality of the ones we do have are fantastic. In 2007 I got to see some works by French Canadians and while I wasn't able to read the language I was very impressed by some of them as well. Jean-Louis Tripp & Regis Loisel have a gritty, realistic, yet cartoony-fun style that is great, Yves Rodier is very much influenced by Herge but is more animated, and Leif Tande made me laugh out loud despite not being able to read the story. It's a shame their work hasn't been translated to English and sold in the rest of North America.
Now the Celine Dion, the writer category is where Canada is weak. While we do have some good to decent writers I can't sing the category's praises like I do the artists and cartoonists. In both years doing the nominations I found the picking the top writers to be quite easy. I do think it's improved a bit over the years. Kathryn Immonen and Kelley Armstrong are two newer writers that have made an impact. One of the problems is that the good writers are not consistently being published every year. Previous winners and nominees Samm Barnes, Cecil Castellucci and John Rogers (among others) were not published in comics last year. Some I worry won't be published again.
I need to say that Ian Boothby is one of our very best writers but I don't think gets enough recognition because he writes licensed Simpsons and Futurama comics. I do understand from a nominating/jury POV that when faced with two writers of equal caliber you almost always give the nod to somebody who created something new versus somebody who's working from a well established license. I sometimes wonder if the Shusters should make a category for licensed work for this very reason, but I'm not sure there would be enough writers & artists to fill it consistently (or that they would want a special category for them). Still, comparing Boothby's work to not only original material writers and other Simpons/Futurama writers it's clear he's a cut above and deserving of more praise. He's already won an Eisner Award, I hope one year he gets a Shuster Award too.
The colourists category did not exist in 2007 so this was new to me this year. Based on what I saw I would say we've got a solid group of colourists too. While there were some clear stand outs I can't say any of them were outright bad, just mediocre. It's already known that Canada has a great crop of artists, I think it's going to become better known that we've got substantial number of good colourists too.
Cover artist was also a new category for me. I always find picking the 'best' covers to be highly subjective and getting people to agree on them is difficult. Either that or my tastes are really out of whack with everybody else. Not surprisingly the same great artists are often great cover artists as well. It's too bad that most covers are the same type of generic "money shot" type covers. I'd like to see what some of these artists could do in an older "selling the story" type covers with dialogue and thought balloons.
Being on the nomination committee twice has really opened my eyes the wealth and depth of Canadian talent. It really underscores the need for Canadian focused awards. We are producing way too many great works to simply be thankful for the stray nomination or award that comes from various international based awards organizations. I strongly recommend that people seek out the work of the nominations of both Doug Wright and Joe Shuster Awards. These aren't just good Canadian comics, they're good comics period.
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