Last week I discussed the preparation leading up and into our second round of the nominating process for the 2012 Joe Shuster Awards – looking at four very specific categories of the 10 or so awards we will be presenting in September.

You may recall that we had assembled a list of French and English creators who were at least “seconded” – that is they received 2 or more votes from our two nominating committees – one for French work and the other for English.

We determined that based on the voting that any creators with more than 50% support would make it onto the final ballot and so the French nominating committee were able to finalize their selections without the need for a second round, and the English committee finalized one cartoonist, one cover artist and all of the remaining Writer spots.

Looking over the large number of creators seconded, we moved the cut off point to all creators who were “thirded”, receiving 3 or more votes. This resulted in 10 artists, 10 cartoonists and 10 cover artists going into Round Two.

ARTIST

5 spots open – Top 10 contenders

Chris Bachalo (Wolverine and the X-Men), Andy Belanger (Kill Shakespeare), Marian Churchland (Northlanders), Dale Eaglesham (Alpha Flight), Stuart Immonen (Fear Itself), Jeff Lemire (Jonah Hex), Yanick Paquette (Swamp Thing), Ramon Perez (Captain America and the First Thirteen), Cameron Stewart (Batman Incorporated Leviathan Strikes!), Doug Wheatley (Star Wars Dark Times – Out of the Wilderness)

CARTOONIST

4 spots open – Top 10 contenders (incl. 1 creator confirmed)

Chester Brown (Paying for It), Darwyn Cooke (“The Seventh” from Parker: The Martini Edition), Ray Fawkes (One Soul), Jesse Jacobs (Even the Giants), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), Francis Manapul (The Flash), Pat McKeown (Hair Shirt), Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung Fu), Joe Ollmann (Mid-Life), Ramon Perez (Tale of Sand), Seth (Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists).

COVER ARTIST

4 spots open – Top 10 contenders (incl. 1 creator confirmed)

Kalman Andrasofszky (Various), Kaare Andrews (Various), Darwyn Cooke (Various), Michael Del Mundo (Various), David Finch (Various), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Jonah Hex), Francis Manapul (Various), Yanick Paquette (Various), Alexander Perkins (Kill Shakespeare 11), Doug Wheatley (Various), Chrissie Zullo (Cinderella: Fables are Forever).

The 13 member nominating committee is then asked to rank their choices by order of preference from 1 to 10. 1 being most preferred (and being counted as 10 points), 10 being least preferred (and counted as 1 point).

They had one week to send in their rankings, and the great thing about this stage of the process is that all 13 members have to take into consideration all of the ten potential nominees. Their cumulative point scores will determine who will advance to the final ballot.