Friday, August 15, 2008  
More hot air about the so called DWA controversy.

:: Posted by max @ 8/15/2008 03:33:00 PM
In response to The Doug Wright Awards' so called 'Canadian' language controversy, re: your defense of the Doug Wright Awards
from Robert Haines.

With all due respect to Robert, and due warning to future commenters. I don't have time to manually post comments for you.

That's why we use an automated blogger system for the site, so I don't have to do things like that. It's password protected so that we don't get spammed to death.

If you want to participate sign up.

And if you waste my time with poorly thought through crap in my Email, If i do anything, it's more likely to be this - post you on the front page of the site to tear it apart.

Don't get your hopes up, not doing it again for this subject. This one time to make a point, USE THE COMMENTS.

Hello Max, I do not have a blog account and so I am unable to comment directly at Sequential. Please post this comment as found below:

I'm glad to see Sequential address this issue and not run away. I think you are ignoring the truth about how the DWA's advertise themselves. Place the words 'Canada's premier comic award' or 'the country's premier comic award' into google and see what comes up (don't forget to look at the cached results, also). There can be no debate that the DWA's refer to themselves this way.

So, Bryan Munn is deeply involved with the DWA's and Sequential? That might explain his Sequential post on June 27, 2008: "... the 4th Annual Doug Wright Awards, the country's premier comics awards ...", though that was lifted right off of the DWA's website. Or on The Comics Journal message board, Brad MacKay wrote, "...Canada's premier cartooning awards meets Canada's best-known cartoonist" and, "...the 4th Annual Doug Wright Awards, the country's premier comics awards...". Check The Beguiling's website, as well as the TCAF site, to see the same sentiment. Brian and Brad are both deeply involved in the DWA's and they are the ones writing these words. A lot of people don't see any difference between being 'Canada's premier awards' and 'THE Canadian awards'. In fact, the DWA wording of 'premier' is probably more pretentious and self serving than 'THE'.

Herve may have been over the top with some of comparisons, but he certainly brought a long discussed topic out into the open. I cannot speak for Herve but it would seem to me that the issue really is that the DWA's are self described as 'Canada's premier awards', while containing no French Canadian content.

Further, your suggestion of having the Wright's merge, or work alongside, the Prix Bedelys is an strange suggestion. There is another, much more obvious, pairing. But we all know that would never happen, and only because the DWA membership meeting would resemble a scene from Cronenberg's Scanners at the suggestion.

Best,
Robert Haines


Bryan is deeply involved? I said closely involved, he helps organize at the events. I didn't characterize it as deep. I'll leave that for him to comment on if he feels inclined but it's truly irrelevant to the charge of discrimination. What this was about primarily.

As for the the Prix Bedelys/hypothetical solution i proposed - I just suggested a collaboration, a sharing of resources, not a bloody "merger"!

And how the hell is 'work alongside' any different from my 'trade for mutual benefit' or your 'pairing'. Don't be a prat.

NOTHING comes up for the solid phrase "Canada's premier comic award"

"Canada's premier comics and graphic novels awards" gets two hits, one is a TCAF/DWA site, the other is Dave Sim talking about the same auction as the first.

To get anything else you have to take it out of quotes, and what you end up proving is that they are in fact well known in Lit circles, and have courted an elite profile from the start.


Not THE.

Take a look at the Jury Lineups. The press they get. The critical awareness of the work the nominate and awarded.

Look up "Doug Wright Awards" in the news search.

EXCLUDE us. EXCLUDE Brads past day job work at the CBC. what do you have?

Along with many other sites, Walrus Magazine, Quill & Quire, Editor & Publisher, Publishers Weekly, Globe and Mail, etc.

Not all nice long articles at all but some good coverage in some very prominent, NON comics media. The first two being Literary in fact.

Do the same of ANY of the other awards currently in Canada. In the News search I ran on "The Shusters", not even "The Joe Shuster Awards" which draws a blank - I got one hit today, in an article about the DWA. It's a short reference about how the ONE thing they do, "nominally" better is award french language books....! hah! I love irony.

Hey, I love that they are out there too, doing what they do. It's great they put together a special comity to nominate FR language books. I haven't got one bone to pick with any of the awards. But no others are an elite award with anything like a national profile!

O_o [ <-this is me giving the hairy eye] The Shusters are a fan pick. And that's great, and different.

Populous.

Not elite.

Not critically Primer.

[ed: seems they switched, from their site-"Although these awards were chosen, in their first three incarnations, by a public vote, the process changed in 2007 to decision by a jury of individuals [not listed anywhere] to ensure each nominee is given adequate consideration" They don't provide the Names of these individuals or their credentials, so if anything, it's gone from populous to anonymous! Ok, got ahead of myself, here's their list now, and it' was along side this "Creator nominees are nominated for their BODY OF WORK during the previous calendar year, not just for one specific work, although they may have only had one specific work published. Winners are selected by a jury."]

For the DWA, the Past Jury list includes Bruce McDonald, Mark Kingwell, Judy MacDonald, Lorenz Peter, Jessica Johnson, Ho Che Anderson, Marc Glassman, Katrina Onstad, Helena Reckitt, Mariko Tamaki. Chester Brown. Rebecca Caldwell, Nora Young, Jerry Ciccoritti & Don McKellar.

Every year a film maker, at least one prominent member of the media if not two, someone from the Arts or Academia, and a critically significant cartoonist.

With it's Jury's CV's on it's sleeve, and a purely Critical standard, ED: nominating a SINGLE book per Creator, The DWA are currently the most prominent, critically elite, highest standard bearing Award that ANYONE and EVERYONE in the country can be eligible for assuming they can fit into what is still, JUST TWO AWARDS CATEGORIES in ONE language. Because for now, it's a small operation despite it's critical standing and they do not have the time and money to do more! Would love to, but nope.

ED: The Shusters have never had a Literary profile, it's not how they present themselves, or how the books they choose come off exclusively as a rule, as it pretty much is for the DWA. Great that they got a kick ass Jury now, but it's just true. Even the prize is a lot more classic comic book humble. Compared to this? The JSA don't promote an elite image, it's just a fact. They are not intentionally Literary at all.

The DWA does, and is. And I don't think they are going to apologize for that. It's how they started, it's what they are all about.

All of this only proves they have one front
on which they truly discriminate, QUALITY.

You can call it a small operation. Call it elitist. You can point out how incredibly small the community is leading to some very close associations that are frankly unavoidable. This is true for all awards let alone the all the comics awards in Canada.

You could suggest we should sit around and wait for someone outside of the community to notice the work - which would be stupid. Far better we got off our asses and brought the outside in to see the work.

Hey, you can even talk about how funny it was when Seth was given the very trophy he built himself the first year, and turned bright red and said himself how someone should have stopped that from happening as the jury sat and chuckled at him. Darwin Cooke also i suspect was bright red, when he stormed out of the ceremony yelling 'this is bullshit' and went to drink some more at the bar.

That was pretty funny.


But excluding Seth's book from the list, given it was the most wildly reviewed and lauded comic of the season hands down even without the nomination! Would have made the DWA claim to be for the Best Book false. It would have been the best book, barring having to compete with Seth's.

He was asked to make the trophies before his book came out and was eligible for the list, or the list had even been drawn up. What ya' going to do?

It's a small fucking scene people, thousands of creators but the cream is a thin skim on the top of it. And as it turns out a few creators of that caliber are amongst the ones who thought recognition for this kind of achievement was lacking in Canada and took it upon themselves to begin to do something about it.

I personally cant thank them enough, even know I also personally felt out of my place at times being nominated that first year.

Yep, that's right, I was nominated and here I am, dyslexic and too damn busy but still the guy running the ONLY web site so far dedicated exclusively to Canadian comics coverage and who cant get any of you other geeks to contribute unless it's to try to tear down shit.

When if ever are more people in the 'community' going to work towards something instead of against?

It's a FUCKING small scene and a lot of it is bloody lazy or superficial. Pardon my french.

And you can complain all you like about that stuff. I, and I'm sure the DWA organizers will shrug and say, what's your point? Do you suggest it would be better not to have the DWA at all? 'cus these are the options for now.

No one else was stepping up to do the job, to put an award like this together at all! The Shusters started around the same time and have very different goals. Before that, ZIP for a dog's age.

So a group of Journalists, Critics, Super Fans and a couple of creators got together and made it happen with the help of the Wright family and some amazing volunteers. What have you done Robert? Better be good trying to pull this one. And I mean outside of being Deeply Involved with the Shusters yourself? That's great you doing that, but it brings your critique into some light don't it?
Course line of it's a small world after all goes here.

Calling the DWA anything else is BS. Calling it pretentious is redundant, and calling it, or suggesting it's bigoted against French comics or French creators is not only steaming hot BS, it's also offensive, dirty politics gaming, confrontational, and unsubstantiated. AND TO BE CLEAR, that was what Herve charged the DWA with.

100% FAIL

Good day sir.
Max Douglas, aka Salgood Sam.

PS: want to comment on this? USE THE COMMENTS.

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7 Comments:

Blogger Jamie Coville said...

Just a couple of small corrections.

The Shusters do name who their jury was here: http://joeshusterawards.com/story.asp?storyID=124

It was:
MARK ASKWITH
GARNET FRASER
MATT GRANGER
DUANE MURRAY
MIKE 'NUG' NAHRGANG

Also, it's Darwyn Cooke.

Friday, August 15, 2008 9:39:00 PM EDT  
Blogger max said...

Ok, wonderful. I could not find that. So they decided to go elitist too then eh?

I got to say i still find it a bit perverse to accuse an openly critically elitist book award of being elitist, which is still the point to me on that count. But far be it for me to stop them. I'm just foolishly saying aloud how stupid it looks to me.

What in the world has gotten into Kevin and co's head, that they need to promote their awards by attacking one that was not in competition with it for it's National status? Of which NO ONE questioned?

It had nothing, i hope at least, to do with the original charge of discrimination.

For VERY different reason, They are both claiming the DWA doesn't have the right to claim it's THE national award, but it doesn't, it claims to be the Primer Critical award. So far seems to still be true, certainly was when the sighted press was published.

Frankly the comments coming from the JSA are reading like scoring ego points on a the back end of a baseless accusation of discrimination.

WTF.

Saturday, August 16, 2008 12:15:00 AM EDT  
Blogger max said...

And are you trying to tell me something by posting Darwyn Cooke's name separate from the list and on it's own?

Is he standing behind you?

blink twice for no.

Saturday, August 16, 2008 12:18:00 AM EDT  
Blogger Jamie Coville said...

No, you wrote about Darwyn Cooke and mispelled his name.

And personally, I think this is one person's complaint and not a whole organization. I've never heard Kevin or James bash the DWA.

Saturday, August 16, 2008 7:37:00 AM EDT  
Blogger max said...

The initial thing from Herve was one persons complaint, but clearly some folks started spinning this off about where or not who was a national award, it's really pretty silly.

Saturday, August 16, 2008 7:49:00 AM EDT  
Blogger max said...

And i was annoyed that someone would start off congratulating me on not 'running away from the subject' like some macho pat on the back and then serve up such poorly thought through babble as some kind of argument. And then ask me to post it for them!

You have to be kidding. It does not look great coming from one of the JSA people either.

Saturday, August 16, 2008 7:57:00 AM EDT  
OpenID savageknight said...

PS- If I can help in any way (kick ideas around, etc) in regards to BD & DWA, drop me a line and maybe we can discuss (actually, you recently popped up on my "people you may know" list on FB so I think I'll just add you on and we can talk there ;) )

Monday, August 18, 2008 8:37:00 AM EDT  

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