Robert Pincombe, previously a member of the JSA Hall of Fame selection committee and a presenter of the Hall of Fame Award for George Menendez Rae, as well as a presentation to the family of 2008 inductee Ted McCall , provides an interesting commentary on the Saturday evening ceremony as well as a lot of comparisons between the Doug Wright Awards and the Joe Shuster Awards.

He also saw my participation in yesterday’s Sequential Presents: Oh Canada! panel as an olive branch of peace between the two awards organizations. To be honest, it’s really unfortunate that people see this as a war between awards organizations when ultimately we all have the same purpose… and in truth, we are honouring different things. I’ve met with Brad from the Wrights many times over the last five years and we’re both pretty clear on where each other stand.

Certainly my participation in the panel did give me some insight into how the organizers of the DWAs look at certain things differently than we do, for example – webcomics and french language comics. It is clear that we are evolving along different paths with similar goals. In the long run, I see it more like the Eisner approach (industry-based) vs. the Ignatz approach (indie/literary-oriented)… and in the world of comics there’s room for both.

There was also an excellent suggestion that both the DWAs and the JSAs should be working to provide Canadian creators with information on how to apply for government art grants at the various levels (federal, provincial, municipal) and we’ll be making the attempt to follow up on that suggestion here on the JSA website in the months to come.