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Kim Thompson on the Harveys’ Potential to be Untrustworthy
posted May 2, 2005
 

Kim Thompson
Fantagraphics Books

"To be blunt, I think the Harveys can be untrustworthy because they are nominated by open ballot -- which I prefer -- but their spotty record over the last few years means it's hard to trust the voting bloc. I think more people are voting now, but still, if you have someone at a company really making sure that their artists and creative people vote, you can have these huge one-year spikes for certain companies or certain comics."

This is all too true, and I blame the fecklessness of my peers for this.

Firstly, every publisher ought to be aggressively pursing their cartoonists to vote every year -- this would help balance out the voting and avoid those obvious "spikes" which in past years have included the legendary Chris Oarr-generated CrossGen surge, the sudden MAD invasion, and even one year a startling increase in Fantagraphics nominations. (I made an extra effort to get the vote out that year, and the result was such a huge victory in the nominations for Fantagraphics titles -- as I recall in one category we ended up being five out of five nominees -- that, like the teenaged Clark Kent competing in his high school races, I realized I couldn't go all-out any more because the results would be so skewed.) Looking over the 2005 noms, I think we can all draw our own conclusions as to who gave it a little push this time.

Second, cartoonists ought to get off their fucking asses and vote. The Harveys can stave off the first problem only so long as lots of cartoonists vote, and they just plain don't. (The Harvey admins have historically been coy about telling anyone how many people send in nominating ballots, and my guess is that it's because it's so few.) This may be in part due to erratic availability and/or mailing out of ballots (people are always complaining to me about not getting ballots, or having trouble with the download), although I think it's mainly because it takes significant thought and effort to fill out the nominating ballot and most cartoonists say "Fuck it, too much trouble, I'll vote on the final ballot when it's just a multiple choice thing."

As much as I disagree with the Eisners' "jury" system, I sometimes think that given cartoonists' and publishers' sloth it may be the way to go, and the trick would be to avoid picking goofball jurors who, every year (although some more than others), embarrass themselves to a greater or lesser degree. (Remember the year they decided The 3 Geeks was one of the best comics of the year and showered it with nominations? Remember the many years when Dan Clowes was cranking out one or two Eightballs a year with "Ghost World" and the material from Caricature and would draw a complete blank at the Eisners? Remember the year they nominated Wizard?...)