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"Point and laugh" is one reaction. "Jaw-drop" is another.
In case you missed the travesty: My 2008 Harvey Award Nominations, let me show you them.
Scroll down to the "Best American Edition of Foreign Material" category. Go ahead, let your jaw drop. It's okay, I'll understand. Because this and this were the two manga nominated.
A lot of people are laughing about that, but as for me, I'm angry. I mean, I feel freakin' insulted. Out of all of the manga released in the States in 2007, they had to pick Witchblade to nominate for an award? Witchblade is bad on about every level that a manga can be bad - shit art, crap writing, huge heaping doses of sexism and misogyny, exploitative, stupid, and overall insulting on every level. It's the perfect ambassador for the worst of everything that manga has not offer, not the best.
The Witchblade manga is supposed to be a guilty pleasure, fanboy-pandering series: graphically violent softcore porn, for readers who like graphically violent softcore porn. Now there's nothing wrong with that, actually. Everybody likes a bit of brain-killing guilty pleasure manga, every now and then. But to take a manga like that and laud it at "the comic book industry's premier award show"?! I don't know what to say to that. Either the nominators just don't care about the sexism and misogyny in the Witchblade manga, or they think that the sexism/misogyny in the Witchblade manga is representative of all manga so it doesn't matter if they nominate it, or... Well, I don't know. I just don't know what they were thinking. I do not understand how anybody could read more than a single page of the Witchblade manga and think that it deserved any sort of recognition for "excellence."
Unless somebody has a hate-on for manga and was trying to slip in a saboteur nominee. That's the only good reason I can think of why somebody would take a series that is the perfect representation of the worst of everything that manga has to offer, and nominate it for a major award. You know, like Ann Coulter telling people that she was going to vote for Hillary Clinton. But that's just a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories are silly.
Either way, whether you believe it's a conspiracy or just plain stupidity, the Witchblade nomination is fairly enraging.
Look, here's a handy list of EVERY SINGLE MANGA VOLUME released in 2007 in the English-speaking world. There's a lot of great stuff on that list, including:
Banana Fish
Blame
Buddha
Claymore
Death Note
The Drifting Classroom
Emma
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fruits Basket
Genshiken
Kekkaishi
Kitchen Princess
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service
Monster
Mushishi
Nana
Nodame Cantible
Ouran High School Host Club
Parasyte
Please Save My Earth
Sugar Sugar Rune
Swan
Tekkonkinkreet
To Terra
Yakitate!! Japan
Yotsuba!&
Heck, even the megahit series like Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, and Inu-Yasha. Those series are popular for a reason. They have mass appeal because they're fun and good reads.
And hey, I don't know what the Harvey rules about reprints are, but Uzumaki, Akira, and Magic Knight Rayearth all got gorgeous re-releases in 2007, too.
Compared to all of the above, I am flabbergasted - and more than a little bit angry - that the godawful Takeru Witchblade manga is getting recognized by a Harvey nomination. As opposed to, you know, any of the above.
Edit: David Walsh's much better post on the subject.
Scroll down to the "Best American Edition of Foreign Material" category. Go ahead, let your jaw drop. It's okay, I'll understand. Because this and this were the two manga nominated.
A lot of people are laughing about that, but as for me, I'm angry. I mean, I feel freakin' insulted. Out of all of the manga released in the States in 2007, they had to pick Witchblade to nominate for an award? Witchblade is bad on about every level that a manga can be bad - shit art, crap writing, huge heaping doses of sexism and misogyny, exploitative, stupid, and overall insulting on every level. It's the perfect ambassador for the worst of everything that manga has not offer, not the best.
The Witchblade manga is supposed to be a guilty pleasure, fanboy-pandering series: graphically violent softcore porn, for readers who like graphically violent softcore porn. Now there's nothing wrong with that, actually. Everybody likes a bit of brain-killing guilty pleasure manga, every now and then. But to take a manga like that and laud it at "the comic book industry's premier award show"?! I don't know what to say to that. Either the nominators just don't care about the sexism and misogyny in the Witchblade manga, or they think that the sexism/misogyny in the Witchblade manga is representative of all manga so it doesn't matter if they nominate it, or... Well, I don't know. I just don't know what they were thinking. I do not understand how anybody could read more than a single page of the Witchblade manga and think that it deserved any sort of recognition for "excellence."
Unless somebody has a hate-on for manga and was trying to slip in a saboteur nominee. That's the only good reason I can think of why somebody would take a series that is the perfect representation of the worst of everything that manga has to offer, and nominate it for a major award. You know, like Ann Coulter telling people that she was going to vote for Hillary Clinton. But that's just a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories are silly.
Either way, whether you believe it's a conspiracy or just plain stupidity, the Witchblade nomination is fairly enraging.
Look, here's a handy list of EVERY SINGLE MANGA VOLUME released in 2007 in the English-speaking world. There's a lot of great stuff on that list, including:
Banana Fish
Blame
Buddha
Claymore
Death Note
The Drifting Classroom
Emma
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fruits Basket
Genshiken
Kekkaishi
Kitchen Princess
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service
Monster
Mushishi
Nana
Nodame Cantible
Ouran High School Host Club
Parasyte
Please Save My Earth
Sugar Sugar Rune
Swan
Tekkonkinkreet
To Terra
Yakitate!! Japan
Yotsuba!&
Heck, even the megahit series like Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, and Inu-Yasha. Those series are popular for a reason. They have mass appeal because they're fun and good reads.
And hey, I don't know what the Harvey rules about reprints are, but Uzumaki, Akira, and Magic Knight Rayearth all got gorgeous re-releases in 2007, too.
Compared to all of the above, I am flabbergasted - and more than a little bit angry - that the godawful Takeru Witchblade manga is getting recognized by a Harvey nomination. As opposed to, you know, any of the above.
Edit: David Walsh's much better post on the subject.
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Emma wouldn't have been a bad choice. Same with Fullmetal Alchemist manga.
Several names I don't recognize since I don't follow manga that heavily- sure some of those would have been good too.
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It's also confusing because there's another manga version of the story, Romeo x Juliet, by a different author and artist, based on Gonzo's high-fantasy version of the story. But I don't think that one has gotten licensed yet, and with another manga version of Romeo and Juliet already on the market, it probably won't be.
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Or something.