All the Comics in the World #11

The winners of the 2008 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (www.ccawards.com) were recently announced, and I wasn't too horrified, so let's call it a good year. I won a WCCA once (Outstanding Writing for Narbonic), which was nice, but I'm fully aware that they're pretty thoroughly goofy. John Solomon of the delightfully spite-filled blog Your Webcomic Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad (badwebcomics.blogspot.com) called the WCCAs "just an extension of the usual simpering circlejerk that the webcomics 'community' is," and that's pretty accurate. Theoretically, they're more than just fan awards because only webcartoonists can vote in them, but it's not like it's hard to become a webcartoonist. Experts have predicted that by August of this year, every man, woman and child in America and Canada will have a webcomic, and 90% of those webcomics will mention Super Smash Bros. Brawl. So, yeah, they're basically fan awards. But they're all we've got.

Solomon, who's a lot more direct than I am, also notes, "In 2002, Best Comic was judged to be Megatokyo. It also won Best Writing, Best Serial Comic and Best Dramatic Comic. If you won't accept the WCCA as pure shit now, you never will." Things have gotten a little better since then, but the WWCAs are still much less a measure of the best webcomics than they are of the best massively popular webcomics. They have, in fact, developed nicely into the webcomics equivalent of the People's Choice Awards. Which is actually a step up, since originally they aspired to be the webcomics equivalent of the MTV Movie Awards, with an ever-shifting host of fanboy categories like Best Female Character, Best Cameo, and Best School-Based Comic (no, really). The nadir may have been the year that Strongbad.com won despite not actually being a comic. It's taken eight years for the WCCAs to strip down to 18 technical and format categories (which is still too many, but at the height of the insanity there were 29) and convince people to occasionally nominate and vote for comics that aren't outright awful.

One thing about the WCCAs: it's extremely common for one or two comics to sweep the categories, probably because fans of a comic that's enjoying a popularity surge can easily turn out in force and stuff the virtual ballot boxes. This year the big winners were Tracy Butler's Lackadaisy (lackadaisy.foxprints.com), which also made out big in 2007, and Phil and Kaja Folio's Girl Genius (www.girlgeniusonline.com), signifying its official entrance into the ranks of the big boys.

I like Girl Genius, so this pleases me. As the creator of the second most successful online comic about a blonde, bespectacled female mad scientist, I admit I've sometimes harbored mixed feelings while watching it gather steam on its climb to nerd fame. But, hell, it's a good comic. And it got better after moving to the Web. When Girl Genius launched as a print comic, it was good, but a little slow and unfocused. The Foglios' three-page-a-week online schedule forced them to get faster and funnier, to make sure that something happens on every page. Heroine Agatha Heterodyne is currently infiltrating a huge, deadly, sapient mechanical castle, starting in the kitchen, while her OTP Gilgamesh Wulfenbach wages war outside the castle. (As a love interest, Gilgamesh has never really clicked for me, but at least he's got a cool name.) The Foglios don't waste time on anything that doesn't build either tension or humor. And Phil Foglio's art has grown lovely, with weird little details crammed into every corner.

I was also happy to see Templar, Arizona (www.templaraz.com), by Spike, pick up an award for Outstanding Character Writing. (There are separate categories for Writing and Character Writing. This is unnecessary, WCCAs. Similarly, Outstanding Artist, Black and White Art, Character Rendering, and Environment Design can all be replaced with Plain Damn Art.) It's gratifying that Templar has picked up a large and loyal following, because it's such an oddball comic. Basically, it's a travelogue set in a small city in an alternate-universe version of Arizona. Templar's world isn't radically different from ours, but the cultural detritus is alien: the TV shows, the fashions, the fast-food restaurants, the religious cults. There are characters—funny, scary, bizarre characters—but little in the way of a plot. It's exactly the type of comic that would have almost no chance if it had started in print: publishers wouldn't try to sell it, stores wouldn't order it, comic-book fans would gawp at it in confusion before passing on to something they recognized. On the Web, something like Templar has a fighting chance at finding an audience, which is one of the best things about webcomics.

Are there omissions in the WCCAs? You bet your ass. I want to see more love for Jenn Manley Lee's Dicebox (www.dicebox.net), one of the best comics currently running in any form, not to mention another comic that could probably only survive on the Web (it's a sprawling, full-color graphic novel, destined to be hundreds of pages long, about two itinerant female miners in outer space). Dylan Meconis' Family Man (at www.projectkooky.com), easily the most entertaining comic you're going to read about 18th-century Bavarian intellectuals and/or werewolves. Dorothy Gambrell's always brilliant Cat and Girl. Any number of the great comics on ModernTales.com, which I edit (gotta work a plug in there). And Chris Onstad's masterpiece Achewood picked up some nominations but no awards, and what is up with that?

Like any awards, the WCCAs don't boil down to much more than an abridged guide to some of the better hits in a particular field. You can't take seriously any award developed by the comics industry or people on the internet, and the WCCAs have the misfortune to be both. But looking at this year's nominees and winners reminds me of what I like about webcomics, and believe me, sometimes I need to be reminded.