I noticed that Jimmy Corrigan won the Eisner Award in two categories – Best Publication Design and Best Graphic Album: Reprint.  Looking at some of the other titles that won in those categories, I found that all three of our previous authors (Miller, Moore, and Speigelman) won Best Graphic Album: Reprint, but only Ware won Best Publication Design (300 did win this award, but the credit was not Miller’s).  I also found that the edition of Uzumaki we’ll be reading was passed up for an Eisner (http://manga.about.com/od/recommendedreading/tp/2009EisnerMisses.03.htm).  There’s only one category it could be considered for (Best US Edition of International Material – Japan), which is why it only has one nomination.  It got me thinking on the nature of the comic awards, the criteria and so forth.  The Awards are run by Comic-Con, who funds the awards with donations from “distributors, retailers, media companies, and such industry suppliers as major printers of comics.” (http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisnersfaq.shtml#oscars).  I despise conspiracy theories, but the awards seem to be much closer to a commercial venture, a giant advertising ploy, then a pure exmination of artistic merit.  The awards are dominated by DC, especially in categories like Best Story or the two Best Series’.  There really isn’t any direct criteria- the judges receive the nominations, send out ballots to people in the comic industry, and tally the results.  It’s unsettling to think that while these comics may truly have artistic merit, their recognition is not quite art-based.