With the Oscars drawing near, it is nice to see that once again, anything the real, grown-up media can do, comics can do as well. Only worse. And with lots of public in-fighting.

The current controversy surrounds the nomination list for the Harvey Awards. Given its size, CrossGen received a surprisingly high proportion of the nominations. It's even more surprising if you consider that in 2001, they didn't get any. When Mark Waid proceeded to decline his nomination as Best Writer, for the CrossGen title RUSE, eyebrows were raised. When CrossGen put out a press release explaining that he had only done it because he saw the book as a team effort - only for Waid to put out a further press release pointing out that he had said no such thing - things were starting to look decidedly unusual.

A couple of points need to be made clear right at the outset. The Harvey nominations are supposed to be determined by a vote among freelancers, who have the ballots distributed to them by publishers. This year, for reasons that are more fully documented elsewhere, the distribution of the ballots was spotty and there was confusion over the deadline. None of this, on any view, is CrossGen's fault.

There's no evidence that CrossGen put pressure on its staff to vote for anyone in particular. Nor, for that matter, is there any evidence that they would have known whom staff had voted for anyway. While you can read what you want into Waid and CrossGen's duelling press releases, you'd just be speculating. The bottom line is, there is no evidence that CrossGen has been anything other than the lucky beneficiary of a happy accident.

CrossGen received a surprisingly high proportion of the nominations. So why the controversy? Well, the nominations list does read rather oddly. Leave aside for the moment whether the nominees are any good. Since the Harvey Awards are essentially a popularity contest among creators, you would expect the nominees to be the sort of creators who already had a noticeable buzz around them. And some of the CrossGen nominees undoubtedly fall into that category. It comes as no surprise, for example, to see Laura DePuy nominated for best colourist.

Others seem... out of place. The nominees for best ongoing series are ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY, EIGHTBALL, HELLBOY, 100 BULLETS and SCION. Two of those are acknowledged classics, two are books that you hear people raving about on a regular basis, and the other one is a CrossGen book. As I freely admit, I don't read SCION. It may, for all I know, be every bit as good as the other four titles. But if creators found the book that compelling, it's surprising that so few of them mentioned it before now.

The list for best writer is, if anything, even more stark. Following Waid's withdrawal, it now consists of Alan Moore, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Brian Azzarello and Ron Marz. That's three writers who've received unflinching acclaim from critics and fellow professionals for years; one hot upcoming writer who does nothing for me personally, but undeniably has a buzz around him; and Ron Marz. Again, I haven't been reading Marz's work this year. I have no idea whether it is good or bad. But if Marz has indeed become one of the top five writers in the industry in the estimation of his peers, it's happened awfully quietly.

It's understandable that CrossGen want to win awards - an intention that they've openly stated in their comics. Awards are good publicity. Awards represent an endorsement of quality. Nominations are good for the same reasons. This, at least, is the theory. But the theory only holds up if the endorsements are viewed as credible. If their nominations are perceived to have come about because of CrossGen contributors voting for themselves, no matter how sincere those votes may have been, the endorsements lose credibility. And that's bad news all round. The awards don't do CrossGen any good if they're not taken seriously.

If Marz has become one of the top five writers, it's happened awfully quietly. By way of a handy illustration, look at the 2001 UK National Comics Awards. The National Comics Awards are voted on by readers. Of course, that's British readers. And American comics, for fairly obvious reasons, don't carry the voting form. Which put the largest British comic that did - namely, 2000AD - at a teensy bit of an advantage.

Even allowing for that, the results were bizarre. Of the thirteen awards, 2000AD or their creators won seven. That may not sound too bad, but then you have to bear in mind that they were only eligible for nine of them. Particularly impressive was the award for the best artist of all time. Jack Kirby came second, as the voting public decided that he was in fact inferior to "Judge Dredd" artist Carlos Ezquerra. Clearly conventional wisdom had committed a terrible wrong somewhere along the line, and the voting public felt compelled to correct it.

This shows a degree of admiration for 2000AD that will be unfamiliar even to most British readers. Most British comics fans I've met, if asked what the best comic was in the world today, would probably not even think of putting 2000AD on the list. But clearly people exist who genuinely believe it's the best comic on the planet. Those results were genuine votes from people who honestly thought so. And since they were the best-placed people to receive the ballot paper, it's hardly surprising that the votes skewed so drastically in their favour.

But it's difficult to take awards seriously when the results depart so wildly from the actual prevailing views. Results like that one don't carry much weight as recommendations. They tell you a lot about the demographic of the voters, but bugger all about which comics are any good.

In the Harveys' case, it's perhaps bad luck for CrossGen that they ended up with such disproportionate representation as to cast that sort of doubt on the nominations. It's hardly their fault that they encouraged their creators to vote while other publishers either didn't receive the ballots or weren't so bothered about them. And since CrossGen's marketing director Chris Oarr is a former member of the Harvey Awards Executive Committee, it's only to be expected that he would encourage voting.

The awards don't do CrossGen any good if they're not taken seriously. CrossGen's behaviour in relation to the Wizard awards is more questionable. They ran copies of the ballot, together with envelopes, in all of their February titles. Fine. They ran lists of recommendations for whom you should vote for - all, of course, CrossGen personnel. Still just about okay. They printed an explanation of why it was important for CrossGen fans not to split their votes and all unite behind the CrossGen chosen candidate in order to maximise the chance of a CrossGen victory. And for the icing on the cake, they positively encouraged readers to send in multiple ballots - something expressly forbidden by the award rules. And that's simply unethical, by any standards.

But leaving that aside - tactical voting, to secure a publisher victory, in the Wizard awards? That's just sad. Why on Earth should fans be encouraged to vote in publisher blocks for individual creator categories? CrossGen has some an extremely loyal audience. Encouraging them to vote in this manner may go down well with the CrossGen loyalists, but it looks decidedly seedy from an outside perspective. And after all, it's the outsiders that CrossGen is trying to impress by getting awards.

The point of awards is for publishers and creators to be recognised by their peers (or by their audiences, depending upon the award). And that's also where the good PR comes from. There is nothing wrong with wanting to win awards. Everyone wants to be recognised. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to milk it for the PR as well. But this isn't like the Oscars, where everyone actively campaigns for the prize. ("For your consideration: Best Actor, Tom Green") If you're the only one out there actively campaigning to win awards, you risk looking desperate. And that's not the image you want to be projecting.

CrossGen's stated aim is to win awards. But those awards will only do them any good if they are perceived as a reflection on the quality of CrossGen's comics, rather than the quality of its campaigning.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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