2018 Inkpot Award Winners
Last week, I posted my predictions for the winners of Inkpot Awards at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, based entirely on who were special guests of the show with “Spotlight On” panels.
Now that the show is over, it’s a good time to take stock of how good an indicator those panels are for Inkpot Awards.
Turns out, almost 2/3rds of the award winners had Spotlight panels.
Inkpot Award Winners Sans Spotlight Panels
First, let’s list the ten people without “Spotlight” panels who won awards over the weekend:
This was honestly one of the best moments of my career AND life. Receiving an Inkpot means more to me than receiving an Oscar. Thank you Eddie and everyone at @Comic_Con International for adding me to this prestigious list of folks whose works inspired me: https://t.co/WlDUw6WdJC https://t.co/N9mvmuXa4Y
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) July 22, 2018
- Nichelle Nichols – I would have assumed they’d give her an Icon Award, instead.
- Kevin Smith – Same thing here. I think he’s up at the Icon status, as well. I did write in last week’s post that it was likely for someone in Hall H to get an award. Smith qualifies for that.
- Cory Doctorow – Author, activist, early internet star
- David Mack – Well deserved, but not a Special Guest, so he slipped past my prediction portal.
- Eric Reynolds – Can’t argue with “Fantagraphics Associate Publisher” for this award.
- Deborah Harkness – Honestly, I’m not familiar with her, but she’s a novelist.
- Brian Pulido – Yes, the “Evil Ernie” and Chaos! Comics guy.
- Richard Friend – Inker extraordinaire, well known for his work with people like Travis Charest
- Nalo Hopkinson – A Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside
- R.C. Harvey – Noted comic strip historian
Who I Got Right
What’s in the box? #SDCC2018 just surprised me with an Inkpot Award! Thank you ! pic.twitter.com/xgwFCorEIM
— annie nocenti (@annienocenti) July 22, 2018
Of the group of 8 creators I thought would get awards for sure, only 5 did. I’ll add links to Tweets of congratulations on the awards, as they happened, often with pictures. Unlinked names from here on out did not get awards:
- Jeff Lemire
- Shannon Wheeler
- Noah Van Sciver
- Larry Stroman
- Yoshitaka Amano
- Rafael Albuquerque
- Jason Lutes
- Ann Nocenti
I’m a little surprised Jeff Lemire didn’t get one. I think he would qualify. He’s won Eisners for both his early independent work and his more recent Dark Horse superhero work. He’s also won Harvey and Ignatz Awards. He’s also one of the most prolific people in comics. He’ll get one eventually, I’m sure.
In the secondary group of 6, I landed 5 more correct predictions:
Congrats to my amigo and brother from another mother Larry Houston from his being presented with the Inkpot Award at @Comic_Con . You deserve the recognition, Larry! pic.twitter.com/xVGl63wIWw
— Ken Penders (@KenPenders) July 20, 2018
- Larry Houston
- R.A. Salvatore
- Emile Ferris
- Marc Bernardin
- Peter Tomasi
- Randy Reynaldo
I did better in my secondary list than my primary. Go figure.
Emile Ferris won all the Eisners, so don’t worry about her.
Everyone Else
From the Miscellaneous Group of creators I wasn’t terribly familiar with, but thought might have a shot, 5 got awards:
Here’s @Criterion cover artist, Manuele Fior being interviewed by @abrahamjoseph pic.twitter.com/7ykvent5Y6
— CriterionCast (@CriterionCast) July 20, 2018
- EK Johnston
- Manuele Fior
- Brian Fies
- Jen Wang
- Thi Bui
- Aminder Dhaliwal
- Elizabeth Hand
- Lonnie Millsap
- Alex Grecian
- Tillie Walde
- Liniers – Won an Eisner, too
- Veronica Fish
- Andy Fish
The story with Fies is an interesting one. He lost previous awards won in one of those omni-present California wildfires. They gave him replacement awards at his panel.
Lessons Learned
I guessed there would be between 20 and 25 awards given out this year. By my current count here, there were 25.
“Spotlight On” panels are a good place to start predicting who might get an Inkpot, but are not the only place. By my count here, of the 27 people with spotlights, 15 received an award. Hall H accounted for two additional winners. The rest are people with legitimately long-lasting careers in the popular culture fields that Comic-Con likes to follow.
I relied on a lot of Twitter searching to come up with this list. Not everyone posts about their Inkpot as soon as they win. In fact, in Manuele Fior’s case, I’m basing his win on a single tweeted picture of him at his panel where you just happen to see an Inkpot on the table in front of him. I didn’t discover R.A. Salvatore’s win until a day afterwards, when I was searching for him by name instead of by “Inkpot.” R.C. Harvey’s and Hopkinson’s awards weren’t tweeted about until Wednesday, that I found.
It also turns out that Twitter’s search box is not perfect, and is often annoying in placing priority to big names with large following ahead of The Most Recent Tweets.
If there’s anyone I missed, please let me know and I’ll update this post.
This goes to show how out of touch I’ve been lately on american comics. For an outsider, this sounds just as random as the Angoulême hopefuls list. Even for the few names I recognized, like Ann Nocenti, I was woefully unaware of anything she might have been doing since she left Daredevil ;p Sad!
That’s a pretty good batting average you have. I personally don’t know who half of these people are… :^|
Other than that, R.A. Salvatore is also as novelist as far as I know, there’s a few comic adaptations of his work but I’m not aware of anything groundbreaking.
Hey, thanks, it was a kick seeing me discussed among your prognostications for the Inkpot and mentioned in this follow up—I’m just glad I didn’t see your article before the show because it would have only added to my nerves going in to think the award was even a remote possibility. As a result, getting the award during my panel was a complete and total shock and surprise. In fact, that moment and my panel is such a blur, I worried that I didn’t express words of thanks and acknowledgment, but my wife assures me that I did, fortunately. (I’ve also since sent a personal letter of thanks to the organizers for the recognition and inviting me as a special guest.)
Richard Friend, Deborah Harkness, R. C. Harvey, Nalo Hopkinson, and David Mack were all special guests.
Hey Jackie — I was going by special guests with ‘Spotlight On’ panels. That was the basis for my predictions. Turned out to be more right than wrong, though obviously doesn’t predict all winners. Next year I’ll expand out to all special guests and try to make more predictions, though it might give me too many candidates to pick from. 😉