Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards
From Webcomic Wiki
The Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards (WCCA) are annual awards in which online cartoonists nominate and select outstanding webcomics. The awards have been held since 2001, and were featured in a New York Times column on webcomics in 2005.
The WCCA represent a form of peer recognition, with voting rights granted only to creators working on online webcomics. Winners of awards receive an individualized web banner for their site,[1] although in 2007 a live presentation is being made for the first time at MegaCon. In 2003, 2005 and 2006 the awards were presented in an online ceremony depicted in comic strip form and involving a number of creators.
The WCCA were started by Scott Maddix and Mark Mekkes in 2000, with the first awards made in 2001. Mekkes noted his motivation as being to "create a webcomic award process that would do the most to help the webcomic community and encourage creators to strive toward greatness." Mekkes set up a committee to run the awards, initially known as the Cartoonists' Choice Awards, assuming the position of chairman, a role he still holds today. Silver Bullets has described the committee as "an independent organization dedicated to the promotion and recognition of online comics and their creators." However, committee member Lewis Powell[5] has criticised the awards as being "horribly mismanaged, they are not well organized and they don't do what they are supposed to" and that "Problems with the WCCAs [include] making people aware of them, getting people to care about them."
Other problems with the awards include Eric Millikin's horror/romance comic Fetus-X being disqualified in 2006 after cartoonists voted it one of the five finalists for "Outstanding Romance Comic." The WCCA committee wrote that "Foetus-X's [sic] nomination for "Outstanding Romance Comic" does not comply with the Outstanding Romance Comic category's genre criteria" of "addressing issues of love and romance in their stories, settings and characters." Fetus-X was disqualified despite the awards committee's position that "We never want to limit the voters choices in any way. ... It's been very important that we not 'water down' these awards by controlling the results ..."
The 2006 award ceremony also found itself delayed due to technical issues, and was not ready until five days after the winners had been announced.
Although there are numerous categories, a fact the New York Times criticised in 2005, noting that at 26 there "were too many award categories", no comic has managed to win an award, or even a nomination, every year since the award's inception. The comic strip to have achieved the most awards is the now-defunct Mac Hall with 9, followed by Chopping Block and The Perry Bible Fellowship which have received 8 awards, and Penny Arcade and Count Your Sheep which have won 7 awards.
Taken from [Wikipedia]
