Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Vote For Gent

The Eagle Awards are something I’ve never heard of. They’re based out of the UK and from what I hear they’re the longest running comic awards. The reason I bring this up is because I’m nominated. But not in the category I want to be in, which is “Best Web Comic”. Don’t ask how I could’ve gotten on in the list of nominees, cuz I have no idea.

Winning best letterer is like a weird popularity contest. Obviously Todd Klein and Chris Eliopoulos are the big guys that have won more of these things than they can probably count, but I think most fans vote for the letterer based on name recognition and/or a quick flip to the credits page of their favorite book…hence Comicraft winning on occasion. If they actually voted based on the craft, it would be Klein or Chris… throw John Workman and John Costanza in there too.

Check out this post about removing lettering from the list...by the moderator of the website, no less. Man, lettering is just a thankless job. It’s like being the guy who walks behind the horses during a parade and shovels up the crap…

Nevertheless head on over and vote… you can write Randall into the top of the category. (If you want to, just don’t vote for a video game comic)

Thanks, folks!
--Randy

6 comments:

Jared said...

Eagle Awards! I remember them from the Claremont/Byrne X-Men days. That book won best comic in those days and "Eagle Award Winning" or some such was put on some of the X-Men covers. I think there were no US awards at the time.

RandolphG said...

Well you're old so you would remember them.... I think you voted Charles Schulz "Best Newcomer" one year.

:)

Jared said...

You punk kids! Stay off my lawn!

RandolphG said...

Ahhh... it's like being in the ol' Bullpen again, only on the intraweb.

Scott Sackett said...

I remember a few years ago todd Klein made a speech at the Eisners basically talking about what a thankless job lettering is and how hard it is to make a living at it.

One more skill that computers have devalued at the cost of craft. After all anyone can 'letter' now, I letter my own webcomic, but man it's really rough. There isn't a chapter that goes by when I don't wish there was a competent letterer working on our book!

Don't worry though, Inkers will be replaced by 'digital' inking, Pencilers will be replaced by 3d Pixar models and the gnomes at Pixar will be replaced the Chinese!

We're all screwed!

RandolphG said...

Hey Scott,

I would've love to have heard that speech. It really is a thankless job... My favorite personal "thankless" lettering story is a long running joke that only I get to see. I've been lettering a book written by the same writer for years now. About 45 consecutive issues. Every month I get the script where he writes in the credits. Every single creator is named except me... I get a "????" every time. I understand that for a few issues but we're going on 50 issues now.

Thanks for reading, Scott! Check back!
--R