In re the typical judge, it’s hard not to imagine something like the following internal monologue: Oh crap, that category again. OK, I’ll have a quick look… [ looks at Minus ] Nice art, but look at that awful background. And the white-on-blue text is almost unreadable! What else? [ looks at Shooting War ] Too cluttered. I have no time for this. Isn’t there anybody on this list I know? Hey, Sam & Max! I loved those games! Let’s have a look… But where are the word balloons? Oh, cool! OK, I’ve seen enough, this gets my vote.

Or at least it should be. Guys like Gary who really KNOW from webcomics could pick a dozen strips off the tops of their heads that would have “deserved” the win more than Purcell’s strip did.

The point, then, is that the judges do NOT know webcomics, and appear to have been wowed by the (admittedly cool) technological display for Sam and Max. Purcell is doing something that can only be done in the digital realm, displaying the dialog on mouse-over, but there are those of us who don’t believe “best Digital comic” should be about technology. That would be like awarding other comics genres their prizes based on the quality of the paper.

I don’t begrudge Steve the win. I do, however, take issue with his comment upon accepting the award. I agree with the anonymous “webcomics lost” statement Gary quoted above — Steve’s words make us all look like amateurs, and in that vein we webcartoonists lost. We lost the opportunity to be publicly recognized as the hard-working professionals we are. With one sentence Steve made us all look like lazy hacks.

Fortunately, we can still give thanks for Eisner Award-losing Phil Foglio, who took it upon himself last year to have the floor planners put webcomics all in one place. Phil gets it in ways that Steve and the judges obviously do not, and professional webcartoonists benefitted greatly from his contribution.