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I liked the Strange Horizons story this week, The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library. Disturbing little meditation about artistic mediums and what it means to get hung up on them, or at least that's how I read it.
But what I really want to talk about is Graphic Stories. I actually went and read the rules about this category, because, unlike the text categories, it's never been clear to me what exactly is eligible. Does it have to be a print edition? Does it have to be a certain length? In practice, the nominees mostly seem to be something like Printed Comic Volume 5: Collecting Issues 49-60 or sometimes Webcomic Volume 7: Most Of 2011. As far as I can tell, what the actual rules say is just that it has to be a "complete work", and when some amount of an ongoing serial gets collected into a published volume, it produces something that can be pointed to as a "complete work", but the actual printing of it is irrelevant. Which is good, seeing as I'm focusing in my personal nominating on "things that are available online." But I am still pretty confused as to what *exactly* to nominate for my works of interest, as follows:
Spacetrawler is a science fiction comic by Christopher Baldwin of Bruno fame. It finished this year and is now running a bonus story. I believe there is a Book 3 coming out - I would have said this year, but I don't seem to see it in his online store, so maybe next year? But I could nominate the whole thing this year, as it finished on the web? Except to further complicate things I did some searching and he seems to have been encouraging people to nominate Book 1 in 2012, so maybe the whole thing isn't eligible now, just subsequent parts? But it didn't actually *get* a nomination, so... I should probably just email him and ask in what form if any he thinks it should be nominated, but, ugh, this is just way more hassle than checking word counts on stories.
Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell is a webcomic that finished this year and until a couple of days ago I would have said was never going to have a print version, because they announced that, in July. Except it turns out they ran a Kickstarter in November and they'll be printing it next year. So, nominate this year? Wait for the print edition next year?
A Stray In The Woods is the least like anything that ever gets nominated for the Graphic Hugo - if the Volume Whatevers are like novels from a long series, Stray is more like a stand-alone novelette. (I haven't actually counted panels or pages, I'm just sort of going by impression. More than a short story, less than a novel.) It's definitely much less complicated than anything I've ever seen nominated for Graphic Story. But given that we don't have multiple categories for graphic works of different sizes, the way we do for text works, I want to argue that plot complexity is not the only feature we should be looking at, here. As far as Stray specifically, look, I almost didn't read it at all, because, eyeroll, a cat comic. Without spoilers, it turns out it's not just a cat comic. And a certain moment was the biggest "wow" I got from any graphic work this year. It was a profoundly science fictional sensawunda moment, or, well, maybe fantastic rather than science fictional, but, you know, the sublime in imaginative literature and all that. It was also a profoundly *visual* moment, that really worked with the comic as an artistic medium and not just a storytelling vehicle. (Also it finished this year and had a print edition this same year, yay for non-ambiguous publication dates.)
(I do very much look forward to reading some more Saga in my nominated-works bundle, but have not bothered to track it down myself from the library or whatever on the assumption that other Hugo voters are going to take care of that for me. Yes, this is very lazy and probably wrong-headed, but enh.)
But what I really want to talk about is Graphic Stories. I actually went and read the rules about this category, because, unlike the text categories, it's never been clear to me what exactly is eligible. Does it have to be a print edition? Does it have to be a certain length? In practice, the nominees mostly seem to be something like Printed Comic Volume 5: Collecting Issues 49-60 or sometimes Webcomic Volume 7: Most Of 2011. As far as I can tell, what the actual rules say is just that it has to be a "complete work", and when some amount of an ongoing serial gets collected into a published volume, it produces something that can be pointed to as a "complete work", but the actual printing of it is irrelevant. Which is good, seeing as I'm focusing in my personal nominating on "things that are available online." But I am still pretty confused as to what *exactly* to nominate for my works of interest, as follows:
Spacetrawler is a science fiction comic by Christopher Baldwin of Bruno fame. It finished this year and is now running a bonus story. I believe there is a Book 3 coming out - I would have said this year, but I don't seem to see it in his online store, so maybe next year? But I could nominate the whole thing this year, as it finished on the web? Except to further complicate things I did some searching and he seems to have been encouraging people to nominate Book 1 in 2012, so maybe the whole thing isn't eligible now, just subsequent parts? But it didn't actually *get* a nomination, so... I should probably just email him and ask in what form if any he thinks it should be nominated, but, ugh, this is just way more hassle than checking word counts on stories.
Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell is a webcomic that finished this year and until a couple of days ago I would have said was never going to have a print version, because they announced that, in July. Except it turns out they ran a Kickstarter in November and they'll be printing it next year. So, nominate this year? Wait for the print edition next year?
A Stray In The Woods is the least like anything that ever gets nominated for the Graphic Hugo - if the Volume Whatevers are like novels from a long series, Stray is more like a stand-alone novelette. (I haven't actually counted panels or pages, I'm just sort of going by impression. More than a short story, less than a novel.) It's definitely much less complicated than anything I've ever seen nominated for Graphic Story. But given that we don't have multiple categories for graphic works of different sizes, the way we do for text works, I want to argue that plot complexity is not the only feature we should be looking at, here. As far as Stray specifically, look, I almost didn't read it at all, because, eyeroll, a cat comic. Without spoilers, it turns out it's not just a cat comic. And a certain moment was the biggest "wow" I got from any graphic work this year. It was a profoundly science fictional sensawunda moment, or, well, maybe fantastic rather than science fictional, but, you know, the sublime in imaginative literature and all that. It was also a profoundly *visual* moment, that really worked with the comic as an artistic medium and not just a storytelling vehicle. (Also it finished this year and had a print edition this same year, yay for non-ambiguous publication dates.)
(I do very much look forward to reading some more Saga in my nominated-works bundle, but have not bothered to track it down myself from the library or whatever on the assumption that other Hugo voters are going to take care of that for me. Yes, this is very lazy and probably wrong-headed, but enh.)
