Okay, so yesterday was the latest of Hobbystar’s seasonal comic events – this time it was the winter Toronto ComiCON, and that took place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. From where I was standing (mostly running the admissions table) we had great attendance numbers, somewhere around 1000 attendees, which is pretty much the best one day show I’ve worked on here in T.O. The guests were great and the dealers were all in great spirits.
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The Canada / US gold medal game was broadcast on some tvs and radios at various dealer booths around the ComiCON so we were all up-to-date on the status of the game. Too bad Jason left early! The show actually wrapped up minutes before the end of the third period and we were all huddled around the room in groups watching when the US team tied it up, necessitating an overtime period, which we also ended up sticking around to watch.
Congratulation to all of the Canadian athletes that participated in the Vancouver Winter Olympics!
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Now that the show is over, March has arrived and with it the March 1st deadline for our nomination ballots. As I write this we’ve received about half of our expected ballots and the list is starting to take shape. The remainder will be arriving shortly, I’m being told, so if all goes well we will have the press release announcing the 2010 nominees (for work published in 2009) ready for the middle of this month.
It is always interesting to watch as these lists come together. You start to see the same patterns from year to year. The nominated artist list is large and varied, the nominated cartoonist list includes a number of clear favourites, the nominated writer’s list should be larger, the nominated cover art is very subjective and has a pretty wide set of nominees. Getting everything narrowed down to 6 English and 2 French works for each category will be very difficult for most categories.
The nominees list for the ballot will include Artist, Cartoonist, Colourist, Cover Art, Publisher, Webcomics creator/creative team and Writer. Comics for Kids, Harry Kremer Retailer and Gene Day Award nominees will be announced on a later date.
Then we need to start shaping the jurys and get them the necessary books to review (if they don’t already have them).
