The spectacular Dustin Harbin considers the Eisner Awards:

The big big big problem with the Eisner Awards, probably bigger than any of the others I’ve listed here, is the Eisners have been around long enough to attain that quality of being too heavy to move anymore. Everyone complains about the Eisners, everyone disagrees with them, which is natural in any kind of qualitative, subjective award. But when you start talking about how to change them, the conversation inevitably turns to “well we all know that won’t happen” or “yeah but people will complain if there’s not an award for _____”. And that’s natural too probably. It’s the same with anything that tries to serve as large an audience as the Eisners do. Someone’s always going to be grumpy, me in this case.But are those reasons not to change something? Shouldn’t the preeminent industry award carry some true cachet? Some thrill other than “now I can put “Eisner-winning” in front of my name and hopefully sell more books”? Shouldn’t an award push an artform forward, define the leading edge of that form, rather than stooping to gladhand each balkanized sector each year?

What makes Harbin’s post so worthy of your attention – besides the cartoon about attending the Doug Wright Awards that opens it – is that he doesn’t just complain about the Eisners, but offers his solution, which includes drastically paring down the number of awards given out, the judging structure and even the name of the awards themselves. I’m not sure if I agree with all of his suggestions – or even all of his complaints about the Eisners as a ceremony/concept  – and wonder if, instead, this is the start of a parallel/replacement award altogether, but it’s a remarkably interesting post that should start a conversation or two about a comic institution we tend to take for granted a lot…

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2012 at 8:00 am and is filed under Creators, Events, Industry, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.