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The Harvey Awards Conspiracy Files

Published Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:49:07 -0500

Last updated Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:50:07 -0500

So what are the top conspiracy theories running around regarding this year's Harvey Awards nominations?

1) Publishers Ballot Stuffing – Yeah man, I mean look, Nascar Heroes? Buzzboy? And that thing the guy from Gemstone posted about ballot stuffing to get them duck books nominated? And all them Zuda books man!!! Them's stuffing them ballots! – Point taken, there do seem to be some unusual choices and indeed there often are. This would not be the first time there have been nominations of ballot stuffing but… here's the thing. Nominations are from creators and the staff at publishers, not from fans. If there was an effort on Zuda's part to stuff ballots, it would have been from within DC. Yet only one other book gets nominated, All Star Superman? And how many comic book professionals could there have been at the publishers to call on to nominate NASCAR Heroes or Buzzboy?

2) Fixed Choices To Get Attendance – You just said it man! So few DC print comic nominated! So few Marvel! And in most of the categories, especially the main ones, there's only one book per company, it's an attempt to get people, creators, companies, as many as possible to turn up, advertise and buy tables! It you're really going to fix awards to get people with money to turn up and splash out, you don't fix it so that Buzzboy is repeatedly nominated.

3) Someone At The Harvey Awards Lost All The Nominations And Just Went With A Set Of Darts And A Copy of Previews – it's just random man! Bust it up, open loose, how else did Nascar Heroes get noticed? If It's all random then how did something as spectacular as Nat Turner get nominated? Hmm? Well then.

My guess? A little of the ballot stuffing, but hardly anything unusual, combined with a disastrously low nomination count from other people who just didn't bother, with a little sorting of the results as they came in and some genuinely wonderful pieces of comic book art that some may have missed out of lifted out of relative obscurity and put on a pedastal with recognised mainstream modern classics. Which they will then lose to.

Because now an enraged industry will actually vote on the nominated books with the added momentum that this scandal has brought. And everybody wins.

Apart from Nascar Heroes #5.

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