NCS Cartoonists Gearing Up For National Meeting: Reuben Award Up In The Air

Members of the National Cartoonists Society are assembling this weekend in Jersey City, New Jersey for the group's annual meeting. The highlight of the meeting is the Annual Reuben Awards, which is the only cartoonists soiree to require black tie and facilitates the awarding of one of the top three or four cartoonists prizes in the world.

This year Stephen Pastis, Dan Piraro and Richard Thompson are doing battle for the Reuben. As a well-regarded cartoonist with a hit strip (about 500 clients, I think) that's been around a while (nearly 10 years) that can't really be compared to any particular previous popular strip, Pastis would seem to me to be the front-runner. However, you can't count out Piraro, one of the stronger, more idiosyncratic cartoonists of the last quarter-century. I think the people voting for Piraro will do so passionately, I'm just not sure there are enough of them. Thompson could also win: I think people see Thompson as a cartoonist who will win the award at some point if he's able to continue with current workload for a while. While Cul De Sac is a classic strip and admired by its peers, and Thompson's versatility in a variety of cartooning forms has become more apparent as his strip has picked up more clients, it may a bit too early to see him holding the Reuben. (Since I'm always wrong about these things, I've picked and discounted all three. I can't lose.)

I'm not sure I see any particularly compelling contests in the division awards. For instance, your guess is as good as mine if Terry Moore, Paul Pope or JH Williams is going to take home the comic book award. Sometimes that depends on who is best known to the membership, and I have no way of measuring that.

I would imagine the state of newspaper cartooning and the rise of on-line platforms will make for a lot of fine conversation or a lot of drunk comics people or both, and I'm jealous of those in attendance. The classic advice to anyone going that wants to meet famous cartoonists is that the older male cartoonists seem for some reason to make time for younger, attractive female cartoonists or the attractive significant others of younger male cartoonists. But you didn't hear that from me.
 
posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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