Posts
The Captain Britain Hugo Awards Thing
I'm back at my desk now, but still in recovery mode. Huge bloggage about Worldcon to come. But first, just a quick post about what happened with Captain Britain and MI-13 at the Hugo Awards.
(I'm indebted to the Plokta team, Scott Edelman and Neil Gaiman for all individually noticing this and telling people, by the way.) One great thing about the Hugos is that afterwards the participants are given out a sheet of data, showing all the votes and nominations, something that the Oscars do not do. (I can just see George Clooney peering at a piece of paper at a reception going 'Brad Pitt by just two votes, damn it!') This year, if you put together the nominations for Captain Britain and MI-13: Secret Invasion and just Captain Britain and MI-13... well, I'd have been on the voting ballot. (And there was also just one for Captain Britain and MI-13: 'The Guns of Avalon', which is the story collected in the trade paperback titled Secret Invasion.) That first story was the only one that qualified for the category, time-wise, so my point was that people voting for the strip by name were pretty much de facto voting for that.
Now, I queried this with the Hugo organisers by email, and they very swiftly got together, considered my case, and gave me an official response, which was that, considering some people nominated in error for Cap stories that weren't eligible, then there was no way of knowing that those who nominated just the title of the strip were in fact opting for the story in question. Girl Genius, the winner of the category, also had some nominations declined on the same basis.
I take their point, I think they've shown consistency, and I think this is as fair as they can be under the rules as they stand. They were also very quick to reply and polite. And I also think that it's important that people who contest awards they care about should show visible deference to the authorities involved, rather as a batsman who's declared to be out should submit to the decision of the umpire. So the matter's closed.
However, for the future, I do think this is going to happen again and again. Fans of ongoing comics tend to refer to them by their overall title. I'm a huge fan of Ed Brubaker's current Captain America, but while I could point you to single big event stories like 'The Death Of'(or is it called 'Fallen Son'?) I couldn't offhandedly pick story titles out of the current continuing excellence, not as easily as I could refer to the title of a favourite episode of a TV show. It gives those who put out their comics as single, easily identifiable volumes, a slight advantage that the Hugo organisers surely do not intend to be there. And what if, for example, I enjoy a particular ongoing SF newspaper strip? The title of the current story might have been announced in one panel six months ago.
Also, this will mean that I'll have to tout my wares come Hugo nomination time in rather an unseemly fashion, just to make it very clear to potential nominators the exact wording they have to use. It'll look a bit awful, frankly.
Finally, I think the Hugo team need a comic specialist to call on. They didn't know about the 'Guns of Avalon' thing, and thought perhaps another Secret Invasion title not by me might be something to do with this whole problem. (Which isn't to have a go at them at all: who knows such fine detail about a fandom not their own?)
As anyone who talked to me about this before we knew about the data would understand, I think there are problems with the category in general, which at the moment is the Hugo for the only comic SF fans have heard of. (No Scott Pilgrim, at a Canadian convention. No Umbrella Academy. No League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. No FreakAngels. No manga. A nomination for Joss Whedon's eighth best comic of the year because it's got Serenity on the cover.) All of which now sounds a bit Adam Roberts bitter, which is awkward. But this can all be fixed, as I think the Short Form Drama category has now made it through a choppy period (you know, awards shows and acceptance speeches being nominated) to represent the mainstream of what good SF drama is out there. This category can do that for comics. (By which I seriously don't mean 'it should have Cap in it'.) I'm glad it's still on the ballot.
And next year? It's Captain Britain and MI-13: Hell Comes to Birmingham and Captain Britain and MI-13: Vampire State. And you'd best get the spelling right, just to be on the safe side.
Labels:
Anticipation,
Captain Britain,
Comics,
Hugos,
Marvel,
Worldcon
|
That is a very bizarre way of collating votes ... I personally would have nominated soley on the basis of the title itself (so Captain Britain and MI-13) not the arc title as well.
... I feel bad now, knowing that I might have contributed to you missing out :o(
Decision accepted like a true gentleman, I'd expect nothing less from you.
Good luck for next year.
Sue (home now, at last. The cat bit me, I think he missed me...) Mason
Well put. I always have a problem with the way the Hugos are set up with individual episodes getting nominated instead of whole shows...except when they are nominated like Heroes was. It would make sense to me that a title should get a nomination not an individual book.
And I'll make sure to spell it all right. I loved Captain Britain (though out here, Cap is always reserved for Captain America!)
Chris
I agree with Jay. When I think of writing in a comic I think about the title as a whole, not a specific "story." Not every single issue of a comic even takes place during a particular set story! Oh well.
The nomination of individual episodes of a TV show is consistent with the way the TV industry nominates for the Emmys here in the states.
Graphic story is a bit different; there are comic books and webcomics that produce a self-contained story arc over a series of months/issues, and there are comic books and webcomics that don't. That's in addition to the one-shot graphic novels. How to nominate those has to be hashed out over the next few years as we see how the process works (or doesn't work).
Jay, Chris, and others:
If you have a look at the Hugo Awards Rules (last year's version here; changes ratified this year don't affect what I'm about to say), you'll see that the rules deal with serial publication/production thus:
3.2.6: Works appearing in a series are eligible as individual works, but the series as a whole is not eligible. However, a work appearing in a number of parts shall be eligible for the year of the final part.
This means that in purely episodic works such as most television shows, it's the individual episodes (sometimes multi-part episodes) that are the works being nominated. The category for them is Best Dramatic Presentation, not Best Television Series.
Heroes is a special case: here it was ruled that the season consisted one one long multi-part story, not a series of individual productions, and thus the series as a whole was eligible as one long work, not a bunch of short ones.
If a novel is published in serialized form -- remember that historically many novels were published this way -- the work wouldn't be eligible until the final part was published, and then only the entire work would be eligible, not the pieces individually.
The Graphic Story Hugo has the same sort of serialized-work issues surrounding it. WSFS voters as a whole are not necessarily up to speed yet on the fine points of how the works out there are being published, and the administrators this year may not have necessarily understood everything either, but as Paul noted (and as you can see in the detailed results, some unclear nominations for Girl Genius were dropped as well on the grounds that the administrator couldn't figure out the voters' intent.
Being Hugo Awards Administrator is not an easy task -- I've done it myself three times. Complicating matters, each year's Worldcon is completely independent of the others, and each year's Hugo Administrators are different. There is no Central Office or oversight organization. (See WSFS Constitution section 3.2.11: "The Worldcon Committee is responsible for all matters concerning the Awards.") It's almost inevitable that ever now and then glitches like this happen. What's somewhat remarkable is that they happen relatively rarely. One of the good things about our system, however, is the commitment to transparency of process that we have, and again as Paul noted, Worldcons are required to publish the detailed results. The best we can hope for in cases like this is for future Hugo Awards Administrators to be more aware of what's going on in this category and for potential nominees to make a better effort for their supporters to know the exact name of the works that are eligible for nominations.
(I actually asked Kaja Foglio what the correct name of the storyline in Girl Genius that ended last December was, so that I would have it right when I nominated, and I made a point of including it on my contribution to the Hugo Recommendations LiveJournal Community.)
The right way to go accepting the current rules and suggesting they be amended in the future, and not retroactively. Nowadays, we get too many people deciding the rules were "not fair" (read as "I didn't win") and demand they be changed to suit them.
In the case of a TV show like Doctor Who, voting for a single episode makes more sense, tho I'll bet they get votes for the whole show - I wonder if they discounted? Did they get separate votes for, say, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, and get them combined? Are there copies of the vote breakdown for past years?
In the case of a comic book, single stories can take place over multiple issues - is a vote for a single issue of a three issue story a vote for the single issue or the longer story, or indeed the ongoing title?
Your move to sigh and move on is the correct one, but it does appear a clarification of the rules might be required.
My Freakangels bag and I might have to take issue with your comment about the only comic SF fans have heard of, but in general I agree with everyone about your taking an admirable stance, and also with you in that it's a confusing category but we'll get better at it over time. We meaning, I guess, both the nominators and the administrators.
It would be nice to have some official response about what is and isn't eligible to stop this happening next year - it's not quite clear to me whether I could nominate the whole 15-issue run of Cap as a single story next year, or whether I have to pick a particular storyline. Similarly, I nominated All-Star Superman this year on the basis that it was a single 12-part story ending in 2008.
I agree that it's a shame to havea a Canadian Worldcon without any Scott Pilgrim on the ballot, but I don't believe there was a volume published in 2008. One for next year, definitely.
As it turns out, I was the Hugo Administrator the year that "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" won the Hugo. There were indeed enough nominations listing them as a single two-part episode for the combination to make the ballot as a single entity.
John Lorentz
Thanks, all. Jay: several folk are now emphasising to the committee that comics are often known by series title. Good to see you as always, Sue. Journey: actually, I prefer to see individual episodes of TV shows get nominated, because quality does prevail in such. Jen: and that's true, one off issues sometimes don't fit into such stories. Kevin: thanks for providing all that highly useful context. I should have done some of that myself. Liz: ah, so hence no Scott Pilgrim. And no, don't nominate the whole fifteen issue run! I'm going to have to specifically warn about that! John: blimey! Thanks again, all.
"Heroes is a special case: here it was ruled that the season consisted one one long multi-part story, not a series of individual productions, and thus the series as a whole was eligible as one long work, not a bunch of short ones."
Hmmm - but surely the arcs in a comic book series follow that same logic? To me the three 'seperate' stories (Secret Invasion, Hell Comes to Birmingham and Vampire State) were NOT actually seperate stories (let alone seperate books) but simply 'one long multi-part story' known as Captain Britain and MI-13 ... after all it did state issues 1 - 15 (plus an annual) on the covers, which seems to be pretty clear thta it is one long story ;o)
A comic produced solely as a graphic novel (Cy Dethan & Stephen Downey's Cancertwon, for example) I can see as being a self-contained, single issue/episode story; Captain Britain and MI-13 - despite having arc titles - I can't see that way.
The rules do seem to state that we 'could' nominate the arc, 'Vampire State' on its own as well as the 15 issue series (as one long, Heroe style, storyline) in its entirety.
That may be just me, though.
Well, you could, I guess, but I'd really prefer it if you didn't!
I'd have put Captain Britain MI13 (The Paul Cornell Run) But am guessing that goes against the spirit somewhat because they're looking for certain story arcs.
My podcast was recently nominate for a parsec, and something in their rules prevented me from being able to use the best parts. Due to the fact that in order for my demo reel to be a viable entrant. I could only use shows that I'd done before may.
But at least that was crystal clear on their website. Which is maybe something the Hugo's should try and do.
This said the Parsecs are no where near as big as the Hugos so perhaps it is a bad example to give.
Still that said its great news that Captain Britain got recognized. I very much enjoyed your run.
But am reading DC Comics Blackest Night right now. So you probably all need to start throwing rotten vegetables at me now.
Shame about the nominations. I was cheered by the arrival today of Comic Buyers' Guide #1658, with my wee review of CB&MI13 #13, then sad all over again that my plea to try the book came to late. Boo.
Ian: ta, must get Blackest Night, I hear Geoff Johns is doing great stuff. Mart: I look forward to reading your review.
Paul,
It's good stuff. I actually totally committed on this and purchased a trade of The Sinestro Corps first so I could bring myself right up to date.
BTW it's ok to like titles from both Marvel and DC is it. Or is that kind of like sitting on the fence lol.
Oh, better luck at Hugo's next year. It be great to sort of know a Hugo Award Winner, even if only in cyberspace. I'll try harder to win one of those parsecs to and we can trade notes:)
I was worried during the proposal of the Best Graphic Story Hugo that something like this would happen. My proposed test case was how to handle All-Star Superman which had the following features:
1) Consisted of a 12 issue series telling an overall single story with a pre-set end point.
2) Had, within the overall story, several individual issues which told complete stories.
3) Also had a few two-part complete stories.
4) Was collected, at least initially, as 2 separate books, each containing six issues.
5) Individual issues were published over two calendar years.
So, what's eligible? Individual issues, two-issue stories, either 6 issue collection, or the whole 12 issues? And would a getting on the ballot nomination for any of the first three in year one make the 12 issues as a whole ineligible due to that precedent being set that the voters had decided that it was individual issue stories rather than the whole collection that was eligible, thus eliminating the future nominations of folk who were waiting for the 12th issue to nominate it.
And does the sheer number of different, valid, ways of nominating this one work split it enough that nothing from it individually gets enough nominations to make the final ballot?
I think those are all the questions that need to be answered to get this category sorted out. But I hope that does happen, as it is time for there to be such a category.