Eisner Awards: Best Digital Comic

One of my missions at Comic-Con is to Dress Up Fancy And Go To The Eisner Awards. It will combine the opportunity to gawk at the folks whose names I see scribbled in the corner of my favourite comics with the opportunity to wear a fancy dress. Perfect, you might think. But the event is usually about 3 hours long and both the announcers and prizewinners are mainly people who could legitimately use the phrase "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking..." Moments like this will be few and far between. To stop myself being bored silly, I have decided to have an Opinion about every category. There are 26 categories, but fortunately I am very opinionated.

I'm not going to try to predict who'll win, or who should win. I am notoriously bad at judging things objectively. I'm more likely to give the rosette to the dog with the happy face and an inside-out ear than actual best-of-breed. But that won't stop me from having an opinion, no sir-ee Bob.

Naturally enough, one of the categories I could quickly check off my list was that of "Best Digital Comic". The 2009 nominees are:

Bodyworld, by Dash Shaw ~ Eh. I couldn't connect to the characters, wasn't interested in what would happen next and didn't read past chapter 4. The art didn't grab me, but I did like the way he  randomly stuck in maps and game rules and so on. The presentation of the comic on the website was fine - it didn't take too long to load and didn't detract from the story. On the plus side, I've just realized how cool a name "Dash" is. Must name something Dash.
 
Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil ~ This is an odd one. The comic at the link seems to be one story from an ongoing saga - not that this is immediately obvious from the site. As a stand-alone story it is confusing and, worst of all, not actually finished. But I liked the art, and the world-building was interesting enough that I certainly intend to track down the dead-tree collections. Of course, I enjoyed Marvel's Onslaught plot-line and have never had a problem following the story in Lost, so that probably means most people will find the confusion off-putting (wusses). The presentation of the strip was nice - it loaded fast and page-turning was intuitive. There was a fair bit of scrolling needed to view the whole page, though.

The Lady's Murder, by Eliza Frye ~ Oh, I did like this one. A great story, told in a great way, with great art. And the presentation of the strip was simple but effective.

Speak No Evil, by Elan Trinidad ~ My favourite of the lot. This is why I love science-fiction. Images from this comic are still creeping me out 24hrs after reading it, which is always a good sign. The art was as much a part of the story as the dialogue. And the presentation was perfect - no scrolling required to see the whole "page", simple clicks anywhere on the image "turned the page" and it had a clear navigation bar underneath. Pretty much perfect.

Vs. by Alexis Sottile & Joe Infurnari ~ Uh. Not sure what was going on here. Rhyming is cool, I guess. As is "breaking the 4th wall"-style art. But I'm still a bit confused about what was going on. He had bad neighbours? The presentation was awkward, as it takes a bit of poking about to find the navigation bar.

So I have my official Opinion  - "Speak No Evil" was my favourite, followed by "The Lady's Murder". Two thumbs up for both.