This last weekend was the annual Reuben Awards where the National Cartoonist Society bestows their best of in various categories and the big prize for Cartoonist of the Year. This year, the Reuben Award went to New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast.
In the division awards the winners are:
Magazine Feature / Magazine Illustration
Tom Richmond
Newspaper Illustration
Anton Emdin
Greeting Card
Glenn McCoy
TV Animation
Patrick McHale, Creator (Over The Garden Wall)
Feature Animation
Tomm Moore, Director, (Song of the Sea)
Advertising / Product Illustration
Ed Steckley
Book Illustration
Marla Frazee (The Farmer and the Clown)
Magazine Gag Cartoon
Liza Donnelly
Graphic Novel
Jules Feiffer (Kill My Mother)
Comic Book
Jason Latour (Southern Bastards)
Online Comics ? Short Form
Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots)
Online Comics ? Long Form
Minna Sundberg (Stand Still, Stay Silent)
Newspaper Panel Cartoon
Hilary Price (Rhymes with Orange)
Editorial Cartoon
Michael Ramirez
Newspaper Comic Strip
Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine)
Michael Cavna attended this weekend and posted his impressions of the event.
A couple of observations:
1. Women cartoonists were better represented in the winner counts than years previous. Cavna writes that the NCS has been trying to shed the Good ‘Ol boys club mentality. That’s surely needed, but I hope that the judges were basing their decision on the merit of the work, not the gender of the cartoonist. If the latter, it’s just another type of sexism. On a related note, isn’t it time to place a woman on the NCS website’s Reuben Award winners header image (see below). Roz seems like an obvious choice, but any of the other two female Reuben Award winners (Lynn Johnston and Cathy Guisewite) would work too.
2. Michael Ramirez won the editorial cartooning division four of the last seven times. Conservative cartoonists dominate the NCS editorial cartooning division; liberals dominate the national journalism prizes. It’s probably a result of how the judging works – national awards are usually judged by journalists (stereotypically liberal) and NCS judges are cartoonists in regional chapters.
Congratulations to all nominees and winners. Our Austalian spies shared some photos of the event and it looks like it was a fabulous weekend!