The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Hmmm. Andy Luke posed a question via e-mail a while ago that I’ve only just gotten around to looking at. Whatever happened to the Eagle Awards?

For those that don’t know, The Eagle Awards are the premier UK comic awards, handed out annually. Or at least they were. The last time they were actually awarded was back in May 2008, when the results for the 2008 Eagle Awards (for material published in 2007) were announced at the Bristol Expo.

Since then, the event’s organisation was passed from Mike Conroy to his daughter Cassandra, nominations took place in May 2009. And the FPI blogs Joe Gordon covered it thus, quoting from an email from Cassandra Conroy:

“‘The nominations process will begin Friday 8th May 2009 on our website. Just nominate your 2008 choice in each category and click return. Nominations close on Friday 22nd May 2009, and then we’ll take the top five nominations in each section and place them up for voting to begin Monday 1st June 2009.

The winners of the Eagle Awards might not have a stage to stand on or an opportunity to give a speech this year, but they will Eagle Award, whether in person or by other means. And the full list of Award Winners will be released to the world on Monday 15th June 2009. We might not have a meal this year, but we will have awards. We will have winners. And the best of the UK and US comic scene will still fight for the right to be showcased on one of the longest and most prestigious awards out there.”

Now since then there’s been absolutely nothing. Not a thing. Voting didn’t take place. And now we come to the end of the year and we’ve no idea what is happening with the awards. Are they still going? Will they return for Bristol 2010?

They may have been flawed, they may have been slightly contentious, there may have been controversy aplenty, but it was still good to have a UK comic awards. And it would be really nice to find out what the hell is going on with them. If Ms Conroy can’t commit to them, it would really be better if she could come out publically and say so. Maybe that way there would be the option for some other foolhardy intrepid soul to take on this poisoned chalice great British comic institution.

UPDATE: 30 Dec 2009:

Glenn Carter, the Eagle Awards webmaster has added a comment to this post with an update that I thought deserved inclusion here:

The Eagle Awards are definitely going ahead in 2010 for 2009. There were problems in 2009 with the level of nominations and with the venue, but this year we will be back on track with a new venue and longer nominations times and better communication.
Anyway, we’ll be issuing a press release within the next month, which will give more details but for further information please feel free to contact me or Cassandra or Mike.
Nominations are scheduled to start in February 2010 for comics in 2009.

This is a good start to the process, hopefully this means we’re back on track and we’ll just write off the awards for 2008 and it will all move forward. We’ll revisit this later in the month.