By Chance Or Providence

By Chance Or Providence

With Oscar season drawing to a close, and Everything Everywhere All At Once making a clean sweep of it, I’d like to talk about the Eisner awards.

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are considered to be the ultimate accolade for all things drawn and printed. There are currently thirty-two separate awards. That’s twelve more categories than the Oscars; but the Eisners span across different published formats (E.G. Graphic Novel/One-shot/Ongoing series), best in show for different industry occupations (E.G. Writer/Artists/Colourists/Letterer), I feel that they cover a much wider spread of recognition across the industry. Winners are chosen by vote from a jury of comic industry professionals and presented annually at San Diego Comic-Con. The jury is usually a mix of retailers, librarians, academic researchers, writers, letterers, colourists and artists.

In my view, anything that wins an Eisner is worth a look. They aren’t handed out lightly. They usually have something magical about them. That indefinable quality that gives a comic the edge above the competition. Be it the art, or the subject matter, or the depth of the writing, or the uniqueness of the voice, or the impact for the medium or the character. Unlike the Oscars, where I personally feel that they previously could be quite self-congratulatory, I find the Eisner’s to be a genuine stamp of quality for the book.

It’s also rare that you would see an Eisner winning title brag about it. Compare the box art of an Oscar winning movie to the cover art of an Eisner winning comic, and you really see the difference in attitude or commercialisation of the award. My favourite one I’ve come across so far was for David Aja’s and Matt Fractions’ spectacular Hawkeye: My life as a Weapon series. This is widely considered to be one of Marvel’s best comic book runs in recent decades, and all it says on the back of the omnibus is one small print line: “Five Eisner Award nominations and two wins, bro!”.

What am I reading? By Chance Or Providence. The paperback collection of Becky Cloonan’s self-published trilogy; Wolves, The Mire and Demeter. Written and illustrated by Becky Cloonan. Colours by Lee Loughridge.

What’s it about?  … hard to describe… as the book is a collection of three distinct short stories, with no overlap, all I can say is that they are melancholic medieval tragedies. They are about the bitterness of life, the hateful irony of existence, and the sacrifice of or to the pursuit of love and joy.

What’s good about it? I should read more of Cloonan’s work. I’ve always loved her DC output, her work on Gotham Academy and Wonder Woman is particularly delightful. I’ve been meaning to get round to her recent Batgirls title. Her writing has a good bite to it. She delivers great chunks of drama.

You can tell that this was a real passion project for Cloonan. She even dedicates the book to “Those of you with crushes on your characters.”. These are clearly ideas she needed to express. As someone with a head full of stories, and no time to put pen to paper, I can understand that completely. For a self-published work to be recognised so far as to win an Eisner award (which the story The Mire did in 2012), it’s a hell of an achievement.

Her art is also hearty. It has a cartoonish heft, with thick inks and simplified forms, mixed with fantastic detailing that make the pages feel complete. She captures grubbiness overlaid on finery that make fantasy pieces more real. I love her use of shadow, and when she refuses to hide the darkness behind black. However, I think Loughridge’s colours really bring it all together. The block colouring makes the pages distinct.  

What did I struggle with? The second story, The Mire, won the awards, but in my view it’s the weakest of the three. I feel like we’ve all seen that story before. I don’t feel like it truly twists the trope enough for it to be exceptional. I think what’s good is that it requires the reader to join the dots, but it doesn’t leave enough to the imagination.

Have you ever played a Witcher game from CD Project Red? These stories feel like side quests Geralt would pick up from a notice board. In fact, the first issue, Wolves, is very similar to a section in the first of Sapkowski’s Witcher novels. I feel like I’ve seen these stories before. it could be due to the recent splurge of high concept gritty fantasy over the last decade, that maybe I’m just overexposed to this style of imagery and plot beats for these to have much impact on me.

Also, the fact it’s just three issues, you can read this in under an hour. I don’t think the page count has the room for the themes to resonate. The paperback has thirty-seven pages of additional artwork in the back. That’s over a quarter of the book… of images displayed better in the stories, or unused plot threads, or alternative covers… why? Again, it could just be me, but we’ve seen this all before both figuratively through fantasy fatigue and literally in the literature we looked minutes before. Strange thing to do.

Would I recommend? Being brutally honest, probably not. If you’ve read stuff like The Witcher or played a From Soft Dark Souls game, these will be overly familiar. Maybe I just read it at the wrong time. These are perfectly formed and delivered slices of haunting medieval horror. They do deserve the accolades they got. But I just found it to be a little unoriginal.