| Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards | |
|---|---|
 Banner for the WCCA | |
| First awarded | 2001 |
| Last awarded | 2008 |
| Website | http://ccawards.com/ [ dead link ] |
The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (WCCA) were annual awards in which established webcartoonists nominated and selected outstanding webcomics. The awards were held between 2001 and 2008, were mentioned in a New York Times column on webcomics in 2005, [1] and have been mentioned as a tool for librarians. [2]
The WCCA represent a form of peer recognition, with voting rights granted only to creators working on online webcomics. [3] Winners of awards receive an individualized web banner for their site, [1] although MegaCon announced in 2007 that a live presentation would be made for the first time. [4] In 2003, 2005 and 2006 the awards were presented in an online ceremony depicted in comic strip form and involving a number of creators. [3]
The WCCA were started by Scott Maddix and Mark Mekkes in 2000, [3] with the first awards made in 2001. Mekkes noted his motivation as being to "create a webcomic award process that would do the most to help the webcomic community and encourage creators to strive toward greatness." [3] Mekkes set up a committee to run the awards, initially known as the Cartoonists' Choice Awards, assuming the position of chairman, a role he was still holding in 2007. [3] A press release on The Dreamland Chronicles ' nomination described the committee as "an independent organization dedicated to the promotion and recognition of online comics and their creators." [5]
Other problems have included the award ceremony being delayed due to "technical difficulties". In 2006 it was not ready until five days after the winners had been announced. [6] [7]
In 2006, voters chose Eric Millikin's horror/romance comic Eric Monster Millikin (then called Fetus-X) as one of the top five finalists for the "Outstanding Romance Comic" award; however, it was disqualified by the awards' executive committee. The WCCA committee wrote that "Foetus-X's [sic] nomination for "Outstanding Romance Comic" does not comply with the Outstanding Romance Comic category's genre criteria" [8] of "addressing issues of love and romance in their stories, settings and characters." [9] Fetus-X was disqualified despite the awards committee's position that "We never want to limit the voters choices in any way. ... It's been very important that we not 'water down' these awards by controlling the results ..." [10]
This move was roundly criticized, with Comixtalk publisher Xaviar Xerexes saying "throwing out the Fetus X nomination a few years ago was a mistake, the WCCAs by definition are supposed to be based on votes and there should not have been any kind of 'veto' like the executive committee enacted." [11] Websnark blogger Eric Burns complained that "if you're going to ask Webcartoonists to nominate who they think is the best in given categories, and then you drop their nominations because you don't agree with them ... then what exactly's the point?" [12]
In 2007, Millikin's comic was again nominated for "Outstanding Romantic Comic," but was not disqualified by the executive committee. [13] In 2008, the executive committee went to the lengths of removing the romance comics award and all other genre award categories in an attempt to avoid further controversy. [14]
| Year | Best comic | Best writing | Best art |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Boxjam's Doodle | Cool Cat Studios | Chopping Block |
| 2002 | Megatokyo | Megatokyo | Chopping Block |
| 2003 | Nowhere Girl | Demonology 101 | Mac Hall |
| 2004 | Count Your Sheep | Penny Arcade | Mac Hall |
| 2005 | Scary Go Round | Narbonic | Copper |
| 2006 | The Perry Bible Fellowship | Whispered Apologies | A Lesson is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible |
| 2007 | The Perry Bible Fellowship | Whispered Apologies | Lackadaisy |
| 2008 | Girl Genius | Girl Genius | Lackadaisy |
The WCCA had numerous categories. The comic strip that received the most awards is Mac Hall with nine, followed by Chopping Block and The Perry Bible Fellowship with eight each, then Penny Arcade and Count Your Sheep with seven each.
Webcomics are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Fetus-X was a weekly romantic horror comic written and drawn by Eric Millikin and Casey Sorrow. Millikin is an American artist and former human anatomy lab embalmer and dissectionist. Sorrow is an internationally known American illustrator and printmaker.
Ozy and Millie was a daily webcomic that ran from 1998 to 2008, created by Dana Simpson. It follows the adventures of assorted anthropomorphized animals, centering on Ozy and Millie, two young foxes attending North Harbordale Elementary School in Seattle, Washington, contending with everyday elementary school issues such as tests and bullies, as well as more surreal situations.
Joey Manley was an American LGBT fiction author, web designer, and webcomics publisher. Manley wrote the successful LGBT novel The Death of Donna-May Dean in 1992. He moved to San Francisco in 2000 in order to work in web design. Manley was the founder and publisher of the Modern Tales family of webcomics websites, which included Modern Tales, Serializer, Girlamatic, Webcomics Nation, and others. Manley is considered one of the "founding pioneers" of the webcomic movement for creating a then-revolutionary subscription model.
Serializer.net was a webcomic subscription service and artist collective published by Joey Manley and edited by Tom Hart and Eric Millikin that existed from 2002 to 2013. Designed to showcase artistic alternative webcomics using the unique nature of the medium, the works on Serializer.net were described by critics as "high art" and "avant-garde". The project became mostly inactive in 2007 and closed alongside Manley's other websites in 2013.
Demonology 101 is a webcomic written and drawn by Faith Erin Hicks from August 1999 to June 2004. It tells the story of Raven, a 16-year-old demon being raised by a human in ordinary human society. Hicks' first public work gained attention as an early story-focused webcomic, and ran for 700 pages before being concluded.
The Perry Bible Fellowship is a webcomic and newspaper comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch. It first appeared in the Syracuse University newspaper The Daily Orange in 2001.
Loxie & Zoot is a webcomic by Australian artist Grace Crowley that ran from 2000 to 2006. The webcomic, which was originally intended for a niche audience of naturists, follows the inhabitants of a fictional nudist resort. Loxie & Zoot became somewhat notorious for the "pleasant" and realistic manner in which it presents its subject matter.
A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible (ALILBTDII) is a webcomic drawn by David Hellman and written by Dale Beran. Ted Rall described the comic as "explor[ing] the limits of pessimism and fatal consequence in a universe that would be difficult to imagine on the printed page." David and Dale are the primary characters, although they do not appear in every episode, and there is a small cast of real-life supporting characters, including schoolfriend/mad scientist Paul, Dale's sister Sally, and David's mother, Debby Hellman.
Webcomics Nation was a webcomic hosting and automation service launched on July 29, 2005 by Joey Manley. Unlike Manley's previous webcomic sites, Webcomics Nation was based on user-generated content and relied on online advertisement revenue, which increased in viability in the second half of the 2000s. Webcomics Nation quickly became Manley's most financially successful website, and encouraged him to turn his Modern Tales sites partially free as well. Manley began merging Webcomics Nation into Josh Roberts' ComicSpace in 2007, but this process took longer than hoped and Webcomics Nation eventually closed down in 2013.
Jeffrey J. Rowland is the author and artist responsible for Wigu and Overcompensating, two popular webcomics. Originally from Locust Grove, Oklahoma, Rowland now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts, where he continues to work on the two projects, while running TopatoCo, a company which sells merchandise based on his and other artists' comics.
Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc.
Girlamatic was a webcomic subscription service launched by Joey Manley and Lea Hernandez in March 2003. It was the third online magazine Manley established as part of his Modern Tales family of websites. Girlamatic was created as a place where both female artists and readers could feel comfortable and featured a diverse mix of genres. When the site launched, the most recent webcomic pages and strips were free, and the website's archives were available by subscription. The editorial role was held by Hernandez from 2003 until 2006, when it was taken over by Arcana Jayne-creator Lisa Jonté, one of the site's original artists. In 2009, Girlamatic was relaunched as a free digital magazine, this time edited by Spades-creator Diana McQueen. The archives of the webcomics that ran on Girlamatic remained freely available until the website was discontinued in 2013.
Templar Arizona is a webcomic written and drawn by Charlie Spike Trotman. It was hosted on Webcomics Nation. Trotman describes Templar, Arizona as "a story about a town, and the people who live there", specifically referring to the city of Templar as a character rather than a setting. The neologism "culture fiction" was coined to describe it.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in SMBC include science, research, superheroes, religion, romance, dating, parenting and the meaning of life. SMBC has run since 2002 and is published daily.
Pictures for Sad Children is a 2007 webcomic, created by Simone Veil. The webcomic, about a ghost named Paul, featured a spare and minimalist black-and-white artstyle and depressive, nihilistic themes. In 2012, Veil launched a highly successful Kickstarter campaign to publish a print collection of the webcomic. However, Veil was not able to ship all of the copies to backers, and emails from fans asking when their book would arrive eventually led Veil to burn a portion of the remaining books. After Pictures for Sad Children was taken offline in 2014, a fan community rose up to share pages and other content from the webcomic.
Eric Millikin is an American artist and activist based in Detroit, Michigan. He is known for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence art, augmented and virtual reality art, conceptual art, Internet art, performance art, poetry, post-Internet art, video art, and webcomics. His work is often controversial, with political, romantic, occult, horror and black comedy themes. Awards for Millikin's artwork include the Pulitzer Prize.
In contrast with mainstream American comics, webcomics are primarily written and drawn by women and gender variant people. Because of the self-published nature of webcomics, the internet has become a successful platform for social commentary, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) expression.
Notable events of the late 1990s in webcomics.
The fifth annual Web Cartoonists Choice Awards took place last month. The master of online ceremonies was a Web cartoon character and so were all the award presenters. Otherwise, it was much like the Oscars. There were too many award categories (26) and some commercial breaks, and all winners were rewarded with the Web equivalent of Hollywood fame: a live link to their sites.
starting points: Eric Burns ... Websnark ... takes a populist approach ... Comixtalk ... a webcomics news source; Fleen ... a webcomics blog; Kidjutsu ... focuses on webcomics for kids ... Librarians can consult the Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards ... and the Eisner Awards
hosting the 6th annual Web Cartoonist Awards. After six years of growing, world-wide popularity, the WCCAs will, for the first time ever, be presenting the 2007 winners at a live ceremony.
Finally, 5 days after the winners were announced, the award ceremony of the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards is now up. But, it is not even on the WCCA website. Ryan Estrada has taken it upon himself to put up the ceremony on his own site because apparently the person in control of the WCCA site is MIA.
Ryan Estrada has been kind enough to do an end run around our technical difficulties and has posted the ENTIRE ceremony on his own site.
after extensive review, it has been determined by the WCCA Committee that Foetus-X's nomination for "Outstanding Romance Comic" does not comply with the Outstanding Romance Comic category's genre criteria
Outstanding Romantic Comic - This award recognizes comics that reach a high level of quality in addressing issues of love and romance in their stories, settings and characters.
the only time we've ever had controversy with categories is when it involved a genre category (your example of the Fetus-X/romance category being an excellent example). So by removing them, we hopefully remove the brunt of (if not all) risk of eligibility controversy...