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Welcome back to the Saucer Awards! We just have three more awards to hand out, so let's just get right on into it!
BEST CHARACTER
This was the tightest result in the whole awards. Last year's winner - Kate Kane, aka Batwoman wasn't even nominated for this year's awards - although she hasn't had her own solo book this year, which is probably why.
Her cousin Bruce Wayne was in the mix though, as were Nadia "Unstoppable Wasp" Van Dyne, Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise XXV and Five Years, Murder Falcon and Adyss from Heathen.
All would have been worthy winners but in the end there can be only one, and this year the 2020 Saucer Award for BEST CHARACTER goes to Murder Falcon - who for the record beat Adyss by one single vote.
We were very pleased that independent/creator owned characters featured so heavily in the nominations - we reckon it's a clear sign of your excellent taste in comics - and we're thrilled to tiny pieces that the winner and the runner up are from the less mainstream end of the industry.
Murder Falcon, created by Daniel Warren Johnson, is a worthy winner in our view. There's something weirdly inspired about an anthropomorphic falcon with a massive metal arm who fights inter-dimensional monsters, energised by the power of heavy metal. It was a gloriously over-the-top series, and if you missed it we can't recommend the collected edition enough.
The next award was also pretty fiercely contested, because who wouldn't want to win the 2019 Saucer Award for
BEST ARTIST
The nominees in this category were last year's third placed candidate Greg Capullo, Terry Moore, creator of Strangers in Paradise and all the other great books set in that universe, Stand in your Power and Wired up Wrong creator Rachael Smith, and Stjepan Sejic, probably best known at the moment for his gorgeous visuals in the DC Black Label series Harleen.
Well, fans of Gregg Capullo will be pleased to note that he's improved on last year's result by coming second, but the winner of the 2019 Saucer Award for BEST ARTIST is Stjepan Sejic!
Art is, of course, a matter of personal taste - but what we like about Sejic's work is the delicacy of line and the vitality of his character's expressions. Ms Quinn might well be foolish and deluded to be so happy to be in the arms of The Joker, but look at her face - she is clearly very happy and very much in love. You can just tell.
That, and Sejic's ability to make his images look as though they are moving, but frozen in time is, for us, what makes him a great comic book artist and a very worthy winner of this award.
He's also done some hugely entertaining cartoons of Wonder Woman hanging out with Laura Croft which are well worth a google if you have a couple of minutes...
And so we come to the very last award,
BEST WRITER
Last year's winner, Brian Bendis didn't even make the short list this year (he was the seventh most nominated writer, so he's still up there) with the final nominees being Batman scribe Tom King (who came in third last year, behind Bendis and the wonderful Gail Simone, Kelly Thompson, the mind behind the brilliant and much missed West Coast Avengers, prolific British indie writer Matt Garvey (who, to be fair has been very clear about not wanting to win awards...) and the woman behind the rise of Ironheart, Eve L. Ewing.
This is an interesting list. At time of writing the only nominee still working on the book/books that got them nominated is Matt Garvey. Tom King left Batman with issue #85, Ironheart was cancelled with issue #12 and West Coast Avengers was also cancelled waaaaay before its time.
In the end though, there was a clear winner - this was easily the most decisive customer vote of the whole awards, so the 2019 Saucer Award for BEST WRITER goes to TOM KING!
Regular readers will already know that we regard his epic three year, eighty six issue run on Batman as some of the best Batman we've read in the last thirty years, so clearly, although we're massive fans of Thompson, Garvey and Ewing (who have written some of our other favourite books of 2019), we're pretty happy with this result.
But that's it. We have no more awards to give. Assuming we survive the coming year, we'll see you again in late November for the Saucer Awards 2020! And of course we'll see you here next week (or possibly the week after) for the next Wednesday Waffle!
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