Memorial Day Weekend Is A Heck Of A Weekend

The past holiday weekend saw a few sizable pieces unfurled at CR. If you are one of those rational folks that shuns the comics Internet during weekends like the one just past, you may have missed one or more of the following.

* Richard Thompson won The Reuben. Memorial Day weekend is the weekend of the annual meeting of the National Cartoonist Society. This takes place in a different location every year, I believe one of the weekend's groupie-thwarting tactics from the early days that still holds sway. The highlight of the weekend is Saturday's black-tie Reuben Awards. The "Outstanding Cartoonist" award is known as The Reuben, and places its winner in a fraternity that includes past recipients Charles Schulz, Walt Kelly and Hal Foster. With the possible exception of the Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning -- possible -- it is North America's most noteworthy comics award.

Richard Thompson couldn't be more deserving of the honor. He's the cartoonist behind the excellent Cul De Sac feature that is a daily moment of grace and good humor wherever it appears, and he has decades of experience under his belt in terms of prominent caricatures and a series of local/regional cartoons so good that catching up to them now is one of the great pleasures offered by the medium.

The show also featured a number of division winners, including Gary Varvel in editorial cartooning and Joyce Farmer in the graphic novel category for her heartbreaking Special Exits. The legacy award winners were Lucy Shelton Caswell (Silver T-Square), Roy Doty (Gold Key) and R.O. Blechman (Milton Caniff Award For Lifetime Achievement): a distinguished group.

* Ed Brubaker gave CR a short interview about the next Criminal series. I always have a blast talking Ed; I hope it shows. This time around the end result will hopefully be driving some additional attention to this week's relaunch of his Criminal property in a four-issue run called The Last Of The Innocent. I enjoyed the first issue a lot, and I think a lot of people are going to have fun with it, more than would seem possible given such a melancholy story.

* Yesterday saw the publication of the 2011 iteration of the CR Comic-Con Tips guide. The guide tends to need total rewrites every three or four years to fully reflect the evolving nature of San Diego's industry event to end all North American industry events Comic-Con International. We're at the end of the run enjoyed by the current "multiple tips" version, 25K words strong. I look forward to the show every year as the pleasurable work weekend to end all such weekends, and I even get to bring along my photographer brother Whit. He provided all the halfway-decent to terrific photos in this year's guide.

I think comics people value San Diego more than even its huge event status mandates because it's one of the few consistent aspects of a life spent around funnybooks: you can measure your life's progress against it. If that guide can help anyone have a better weekend, or even entertain someone who'd like to blow a few minutes during a miserable workday between now and then, I'm more than happy.
 
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