Historically speaking, the occassional Marvel title would make it’s way onto the Harvey Awards nominee list, but they never showed up en masse. So imagine my surprise when I read that, after a company policy that seemed to actively ignore the Harveys for years, Marvel decided to block-vote numerous series onto the nomination list. Come on! Even when Bendis’ Avengers was at least enjoyable reading for the first dozen issues or so, it was never award winningly good. Ditto for Brubaker’s run on Captain America, or Frank Cho’s Shanna art. Frankly, while there are some truly enjoyable books to come out of The House Of Ideas in the last few years, I’d hesistate to say that any of them are truly award worthy.

Nonetheless, if Marvel was serious about representing themselves as a company to the Harveys this year, the big question is why did they nominate what they did? Frankly - Vertigo being left out of the equation - I don’t think either of the big two have released anything creatively worthy of winning an award over the last year, but I can understand and respect a company’s desire to be represented. Bendis may be their golden boy, but to be honest, his Ultimate Spider-Man (or last year’s Harvey nomination, Daredevil) is far more consistently entertaining and of higher quality than anything else he’s done there. Peter David’s X-Factor is a much more intelligent read than practically anything else on Marvel’s publishing schedule, but even that’s not really worthy of industrywide recognition - ditto for She Hulk and Runaways, both of which I’d have an easier time digesting as best writer nominees than New Avengers.

Of course, there’s a potential silver lining in this mess. The last time a company (CrossGen) decided to pull one of these “ballot box stuffing” approaches to the Harveys, they were sufficiently chastened and embarassed by the voters, not winning a single category. And as we all know, history, it does like to repeat itself.

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