So. GLAAD announced its media awards nominations for 2009 today, including, of course, the nominations for outstanding comic book. Let's remind everyone of the requirements for nomination, shall we? Let's shall?
GLAAD Media Awards Categories
Comic Book
Given to a comic book published by the four mainstream publishers and their subsidiary labels: Dark Horse, DC, Image, and Marvel. At GLAAD's discretion, a comic book from another publisher may be nominated if the book achieves a level of visibility and impact similar to a mainstream publisher. The comic book may be nominated for an individual issue, a story arc or a recurring LGBT character. Receives Award: Award is given to the comic book. Writer, artist and/or editor may accept.
Insert teeth-grinding at GLAAD's stupid limitations here. And ... OK, we're done. Moving on.
Actually, allowing for GLAAD's corporatist bent and the actual purpose of the awards ... I don't hate these nominations. In fact, it's really a pretty good lot. (I
know! I'd never have thought I'd say that either!)
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) - 21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards - English-Language Nominees: Outstanding Comic Book
Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Jane Espenson, Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Z. Greenberg, Jim Krueger, Doug Petrie, Joss Whedon (Dark Horse Comics)
Detective Comics by Greg Rucka (DC Comics)
Madame Xanadu by Matt Wagner (Vertigo/DC Comics)
Secret Six by Gail Simone (DC Comics)
X-Factor by Peter David (Marvel Comics)
Given that particular group of nominees, I suspect it will come down to Detective vs X-Factor. And I can't say as I'd argue with that, either. (I think the Rucka/Williams run on Detective was perhaps the best thing I read in comics last year, period. It certainly was the most gorgeous.) Mind, that does have one caveat: I don't read Marvel, so I don't read X-Factor. That said, its nomination
makes perfectly good sense; the reason it might beat out Detective is because Rob Liefeld, the creator of the characters, who hasn't written them in several years,
had a very public hissyfit at the very notion that the character could be gay. If GLAAD can't resist the opportunity to thumb their nose at him while rewarding what seems to have been good writing ... well, I certainly couldn't blame them. (For what it's worth, Peter David and Rob Liefeld have an ...
interesting back and forth in the comments thread in the latter article.) Detective is the only comic from any of the Big Four featuring two lesbian lead characters, Kate Kane's Batwoman in the main story and Renee Montoya's The Question in the backup. I only read Secret Six in trade, so I'm not sure what the storylines there were -- although reading
Blackest Night: Suicide Squad, which involves the Secret Six, certainly lets one know that Scandal is still most definitely interested in the women -- and Madame Xanadu had one arc featuring a lesbian relationship (granted, involving the main character). And Buffy had Willow, whose relationship with Kennedy became more prominent this year; I don't remember if the whole "Buffy having a lesbian moment" thing was this year or last.
As for the other categories ... well, it's an interesting batch. I didn't see or even hear of a lot of the films that were nominated in the small film category. The television categories are pretty standard, on the whole, with not that much unexpected. I do hope "One Life to Live" wins the daytime drama award. (...Oh,
hush already! It's fun! And the Oliver/Kyle/Kris storyline was actually surprisingly well handled -- by which I mean that the coming-out part was really well done, and the romance part was treated pretty much exactly like they treated the straight romances that were going on at the same time. Though I do think Kyle's candle thing was a little ... odd. And that's independent of Amelia's storyline, which was brief but weirdly awesome. But I digress.) The startling thing is that "RuPaul's Drag Race" actually made it for Outstanding Reality Program; a gay program on a gay network nominated for a GLAAD award! Imagine that! (...OK, I'll stop now. Maybe.) And I somehow thought that ABC Family's "Greek" was a drama, and not a comedy. (And look! "Beautiful People" from Logo! Another gay show from a gay network! Good heavens! ... OK,
now I'll stop.) In any event, I don't expect that the rest of the category has much chance against "Glee", which seems to have all sorts of momentum these days.
The journalism nominations look very solid. I've actually read or seen most of the stuff nominated -- how on earth did that happen? -- and I can't really argue with much of it.
I do wish that the nominations page had more (or, well,
any) links to the nominated items or websites, where possible. But that's a technical quibble.
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