Best Graphic Story Hugo: Ooopsie!

[womzilla]

From the final issue of Voyageur, the Worldcon newsletter produced by the Plokta Cabal:

While formatting the Hugo nomination list this morning, we discovered that Plokta fave author Paul Cornell (the next Neil Gaiman™) was apparently incorrectly bumped from the Hugo for Best Graphic Story.

Paul's Marvel comic Captain Britain & MI-13 received six nominations for Best Graphic Story and [his] Captain Britain & MI-13: Secret Invasion received eight nominations--but they are effectively the same thing, and fourteen nominations would have been enough to secure a place on the shortlist. Hmph!

Footnotes: CB&MI-13 was a short-lived ongoing series which debuted in 2008. It starred Captain Britain teamed up with MI-13, a group of agents of Britain's counter-magical forces special service, lead by Pete Wisdom, a Warren Ellis creation and former boyfriend of Kitty Pride. MI-13 were introduced in the earlier Cornell-scripted miniseries, Wisdom, in 2006-07, and featured, among other figures, Skrull John, a Skrull who habitually assumed the form of John Lennon. The current series ran 15 issues plus an annual and just finished last month. One of the evil forces they fight is the demonic Plokta. So it all ties back together, see?)

"Secret Invasion" was Marvel's big summer crossover for 2008, and drove the story line in the first four issues of the MI-13 ongoing, all of which appeared in 2008. So, yes, those are overlapping nominations and should definitely have been counted together. If the nominations for this work had been counted correctly, both Fables: War and Pieces and Serenity: Better Days would have been pushed off the final ballot.

What an appalling oversight!

I am not volunteering to administer the Best Graphic Story Hugo. No. I am not. I am not. No. Just bloody kill me if it looks like I'm doing that. If I volunteer to consult, please at least mock me.

ETA: In a comment on a later post, despot_liz points out that it's likely that the administrators who counted the nominations in this category tossed out the nominations for Captain Britain and MI-13 because it wasn't a nomination for "a single story". Given a) the small number of nominated items, b) the clear overlap between CB&MI13 and CB&MI13: Secret Invasion, and c) that this is the first year that the category was part of the Hugos, it seems astonishingly unsound to hold all the nominations to a standard of complete unambiguity.

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It seems to me incontrovertible that a graphic novel that is published in 2008 and collects four 2008-published issues of a comic should have its nominations bundled up -- that storyline was the only 'complete story' of Captain Britain published in the relevant year.

Well, we will see whether the Hugo administrators see fit to reconsider -- but more generally, I think this is a very difficult category that's going to present problems of this kind every year. Not that this should be a reason not to award this Hugo.

[nwhyte]

Dear God, that's terrible! Poor Paul.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

And poor Leonard Kirk--he's did good work on the title, too.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling something like this was going to happen. My test case was All-Star Superman, which could reasonably get nominations for a) several individual issues or two-parters which told a complete story, b) all twelve issues which did tell an overall single story c) either of the two collections, which I believe publish 6 issues each.

[gaspode.livejournal.com]

It absolutely shouldn't be a reason not to award it.. They just need to make sure that someone who knows something about comics oversees the category - this was a rookie mistake. Poor Paul indeed ...

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Hi, Paul! Great to meet you at Anticipation.

"they need someone on there who really knows their comics"

That's key, yes.

"But I also think it's important to recognise their authority and not moan too much."

I do agree that the decisions of the administrators need to be respected. However, in turn they need to take care to demonstrate their thoughfulness. Since this was a conscious decision, they should have gotten out in front of it. They could have issued a clarifying statement well before the release of the nomination details about how the nominations were counted that would have preserved the confidentiality of voting. Failing that, such a statement should have accompanied the release of the nomination list instead of having the anomaly discovered a day later.

(If such a statement *was* released, well, that's my fault for not paying attention.)

Congrats on your many nominations in this category, and it seems like you're bearing this with grace.