Several sites have recently been reporting that the Canada Council for the Arts made a boo-boo when announcing the nominees for the prestigious Governor General’s award for Children’s Literature – the graphic novel Skim was one of the books nominated, but in the release they only named the writer, Mariko Tamaki, as the creator, ignoring the artist and co-creator, her cousin Jillian Tamaki. The mistake was swiftly pointed out but the organisers have said that it is too late to update the information. Its nice to see a graphic novel being included on the shortlist, but failing to include the artist in the awards information is a bit of an oversight and then not updating it when a lot of people point it out seems even sillier, frankly.
Now Neil Gaiman, remembering when the Sandman was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and specifically asked to make sure artist Charles Vess was on the nomination too (which they did), adds his comment: “If you give a writing award to a comic and ignore the art, you’re being foolish, short-sighted and fundamentally failing to understand what comics are or what comics writing means. And it’s never too late to fix things.” I don’t think anyone is suggesting the organisers are being deliberately mean and if they aren’t overly familiar with comics that’s understandable, not everyone is (and we forget that sometimes because we are so familiar with the medium), but when you’ve had a lot of people, including other respected writers and artists, pointing out the mistake and then just not doing anything about it that seems damned silly and a little bit obstinate.
Tue, Nov 18, 2008
Awards