Eisners, Shusters nominees announced

 The Beat has the complete list of this year’s Eisner Award nominees. Of course, the category most relevant to manga readers is the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan:

• Cat Eyed Boy, by Kazuo Umezu (Viz)
• Dororo, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
• Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)
• The Quest for the Missing Girl, by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
• Solanin, by Inio Asano (Viz)

MangaBlog notes that there are fewer manga nominees than in previous years (and with the exception of three titles picked out by MangaBlog, no other manga scored in any category outside of best foreign material-japan), and wonders if this might be cause for contention.  Let me speak pre-emptively here: I have no problem with this at all… at least, I don’t see this as a problem for the Eisners.  Awards shows are about promoting industry and rewarding creativity, more than being the final word on objective quality with a clause about equal time.  If we all want to see more manga being recognized, then the impetus is on manga industry pros and fans to create and fund our own respectable manga award.  Granted, the track record on that front isn’t sterling…

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The nominees for the Joe Shuster Award have also been released, which you can find at Comics212.  While strictly a Canadian affair, sometime manga publishers Drawn and Quarterly and Udon Entertainment both recieved nods for Best Publisher.

Our official policy is not to recognize the legitimacy of any comic award that does not have a category for “outstanding performance of an intimate personal massage device in a comic.”  Nevertheless, congratulations to all the nominees.

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Can calligraphy be hentai?  Yes.  Yes it can.

(Okay, “hentaigana” is really a style of cursive writing, but that idea is still full of possibilities.)

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The Comics Reporter relates creator Felix Tannebaum’s positive experience with Diamond.  The Xeric Award-winner was actually approached by Diamond to distribute his book, and was able to work around the minimum requirements.

This probably doesn’t get mentioned enough, but something Diamond does very well is that, while not everyone at Diamond may care about your product, they’ll make sure you work with someone who does: brand managers.  And should you have the fortune of being assigned a brand manager who genuinely enjoys your work, then magical things can happen.

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And on the opposite end of the minimums hammer… according to Robot 6, publisher Asylum Press (not familiar with them, but some of the preview pages on their site venture into Eli Roth territory) will be selling the title Fearless Dawn directly to retailers, after Diamond cancelled the 1200-or so pre-orders.  That’s going to be tough, but good on them for continuing their support for the book in face of such a setback.  A lesser pub would have taken their ball and gone home.

With a cover price of $2.95, Fearless Dawn would actually be skirting the old sales minimum of $1500 wholesale.  I’m armchair quarterbacking here, but one wonders, given that they seem to cater to a very specific fanbase, if there wasn’t some room to tweak their pricing strategy.  $4.50 and a half-page ad buy would have put them very close to the $2500 mark…