RAMIREZ THE SURPRISE WINNER OF THE NCS REUBEN

And the Silver Reubens Winners

In a fortuitous stroke worthy of a Hollywood scripter, this year’s Reuben trophy for Cartoonist of the Year went to political cartoonist Michael Ramirez, a deserved if unusual recipient. First, the National Cartoonist Society, traditionally a gaggle of syndicated comic strip cartoonists, doesn’t often hand this trophy to an editorial cartoonist: Ramirez is only the 9th time in the 71 times the award has been given. Second, Ramirez is of the conservative bent, and most editoonists are liberal (as are all of the previous editoonist winners). So that’s two rarities. Third—although not a rarity but certainly unforeseeable—he just lost his job a couple weeks ago when his newspaper, the Investor’s Business Daily, gave up its print edition and went whole hog on line. NCS hasn’t often given the Reuben to an unemployed cartoonist. Never that I can recall. Getting the nod as Cartoonist of the Year ought to help Michael find his next gig. But the NCS members’ vote for him was not at all connected to his unemployment: balloting for the Reuben was completed long before he lost his gig.

            Ramirez’s employment history recently is wonderfully ironic. He was laid off at the Los Angeles Times ten years ago for budgetary reasons; he was immediately hired by the Investor’s Business Daily, which, knowing a thing or two about budgets, business and investments, recognized a good deal when they saw one. (Ramirez not only did the editorial cartoon: he was co-manager of the editorial page.) Alas, the IBD people seem to have lost their vision.

            The Reuben is but one of many honors Ramirez has heaped up over the years.

            He’s a two-time winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize (1994 and 2008) and a three-time Sigma Delta Chi, Society of Professional Journalism Award winner. He is a Lincoln Fellow, and an honorary member of Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society. He has won almost every major journalism award in America including the 2005 National Journalism Award, the 2008 Fischetti Award and the H. L. Mencken Award.  Michael is the recipient of the prestigious UCI Medal from the University of California, Irvine.

            His work is seen world-wide in over four hundred newspapers and magazines through Creators Syndicate and has been featured on CNN, Fox News, and Fox Business and seen in USA Today, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Post, Time magazine, National Review and US News and World Report. Two books of his editoons have been published:  Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion and Give Me Liberty or Give Me Obamacare.

            Ramirez hasn’t won the Big One for editorial cartooning—the Herblock Award—but he has been nominated five times for the NCS Silver Reuben for editorial cartooning; won three times. Makes you wonder: since most cartoonists, particularly editoonists, are liberal, how’d Ramirez rack up so many nominations/wins at NCS? He’s that good, kimo sabe, as you can see from a short sample of his work posted near here. He’s perhaps the only one of the few conservative political cartoonists I can understand. Some of the others are so far right I can’t figure them out: their boogie-men don’t register with me. Ramirez is hard-hitting but never mean, like others of his ilk sometimes are (Glen McCoy notably).

            The other contestants for the Reuben were Lynda Barry (Ernie Pook’s Comeek), Hilary Price (Rhymes With Orange), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), and Mark Tatulli (Lio and Heart of the City). Three (Price, Pastis, and Tatulli) are in the traditional NCS Reuben winner category—all syndicated comic strip artists. The fourth, Barry, is a genuine wild-card and a tribute to NCS’s recent efforts to get itself out of the box it’s been in for decades: she’s an altie. Her work has appeared regularly only in alternative weekly newspapers—and in book collections. Her emergence as a finalist may be due to a recent broadening revamp of the nominating/voting process at NCS.

            In picking Ramirez, the Society demonstrated that it is not quite as provincial as its long history of syndicated comic strip Reuben winners suggests. But if either Barry or Price had won, they’d advance the notion even further, becoming only the fourth female Reuben winner in the Socierty’s 70-year history.

            The Reuben was awarded at the NCS annual meeting, held for years over the Memorial Day weekend, this year in Memphis, Tennessee, May 27-29. At the same banquet, the Society presented 15 Silver Reuben Awards to cartoonists who work in the various venues of cartooning. Until this year, these awards were dubbed “division awards.” But they’ve now been given a new title, making official what has been unofficial for a long time: division award winners have been informally called Reuben winners even though, strictly speaking, only the Cartoonist of the Year enjoys that distinction.

            Among the 46 nominees, Australia artist Anton Emdin was nominated in three divisions—Newspaper Illustration, Advertising/Product Illustration and Magazine/Feature Illustration—and he won in all three. Deservedly, in MHO: as I’ve said before, he is today the world’s most thorough-going cartoonist, expert—highly skilled—in any cartooning endeavor he puts his hand and pen to, including caricature, strip, gag cartooning and illustration—and always in the spirit of highest exuberance. His style and the breadth of his achievement most often evoke Jack Davis of yore, but Emdin can (and does) vary the way he draws to suit the venue.

            Because being nominated is an honor, too, we list herewith both Silver Reuben nominees and winners, the latter marked with a splashy asterisk (*). The winners marked with two asterisks (**) weren’t present to receive their awards. And that circumstance raises another ugly thought: those nominees apparently don’t have a high enough regard for the NCS awards to come to the party that might celebrate their achievement.

            The divisions that fall into this category of seeming unimportance have for several years been the same ones—the ones outside the traditional purview of the Society’s members, newspaper and magazine gag cartooning. The outsiders have usually been animation (both tv and feature film), comic books (including graphic novels), and online cartooning.

            An astounding 9 of the 15 winners didn’t bother to show up to get their awards. And 3 of the remaining 6 were the same guy.

            Sad to say, this situation does not speak highly of NCS prestige. And that’s too bad: the Society has been conscientious, albeit terribly slow, in recognizing the emergence of cartooning in fields of endeavor other than syndicated newsprint.

            It took a long time before comic books were seen as award-worthy. The foot-dragging in this category doubtless reflects the assembly-line creative process in most comic book production. Written by one batch of persons and drawn by several specialists (backgrounds, lettering, etc.), the historic comic book left a crucial question unanswered: if the “creator” is to get an award, who, exactly, is the creator? The first NCS division award for comic books was conferred in 1956, ten years after the Society was founded. It went to Jerry Robinson.

            But Jack Cole was still producing single-handedly his brilliantly conceived and executed Plastic Man in 1948, two years after NCS started awarding and denominating the Cartoonist of the Year. And there have been other solo funnybook geniuses. George Carlson of Jingle Jangle Tales, f’instance. More recently, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. And before that, Frank Miller’s recasting of the Batman mold in the Dark Knight books. (Let’s see if his current DK effort, which’ll conclude this year, will show up at NCS’s next Reuben weekend. Don’t hold your breath.)

            In recent years—at least the last twenty—comic books have increasingly been produced by smaller and smaller bunches of people. And a few lately have been signally the work of a pair of creators. Mark Waidand Chris Samnee in Daredevil. Matt Fraction and David Aja in the even more adventurously plotted and pictured Hawkeye. These teams have done significant work in the form—imaginative in both story and visualization.

            But NCS hasn’t recognized their achievement. Maybe too few NCS members work in comic books?

            And graphic novels suffer somewhat the same fate even though they are more often than not lately the work of a single creator. Why hasn’t Scott McCloud’s brilliant exploitation of the form in The Sculptor been recognized by NCS? Published in 2015, it was eligible for this round of Silver Reubens. So was Bill Griffith’s Invisible Ink. Other graphic novel achievements of recent years have also been ignored. Rick Geary’shistorical true crime books. Peter Kuper’s The System. The list, unhappily, goes on and on.

            But—ooops, my bad—I’ve allowed myself to be diverted from my errand. Here’s that list of Silver Reubens nominees and winners, the latter indicated with an asterisk (*); when two asterisks (**), the winner wasn’t present to receive his award.

NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS

Lio —Mark Tatulli

*Pajama Diaries— Terri Libenson

Pearls Before Swine—Stephan Pastis

Two of these nominees, Tatulli and Pastis, were also nominated for the Reuben.

POLITICAL CARTOONS

Mike Luckovich

Michael Ramirez

*Ann Telnaes

Two liberals, one conservative; Luckovich is a previous Reuben winner

NEWSPAPER PANELS

**Bizarro— Dan Piraro (a previous Reuben winner)

The Flying McCoys— Glenn and Gary McCoy

Reality Check— Dave Whamond

FEATURE ANIMATION

“Boy and the World”

“Inside Out”

*“The Peanuts Movie”

TELEVISION ANIMATION

**“Tumble Leaf” (Amazon) — Drew Hodges

“Puffin Rock” (Netflix) — Maurice Joyce

“Zack & Quack” (Nick Jr.) — Gili Dolev and Yvette Kaplan

GAG CARTOONS

Glen Le Lievre

Benjamin Schwartz

**David Sipress

All in The New Yorker, I believe. Where else now that Playboy is defunct?

ADVERTISING/PRODUCT ILLUSTRATION

Ray Alma

*Anton Emdin

Luke McGarry

GREETING CARDS

**Jim Benton

Scott Nickel

Robin Rawlings

COMIC BOOKS

Giant Days (Boom Box) — Max Sarin

**Prez (DC Comics) — Ben Caldwell

Squirrel Girl (Marvel) — Erica Henderson

GRAPHIC NOVELS

**“Nanjing the Burning City” (Dark Horse) — Ethan Young

“New Deal” (Dark Horse) — Jonathan Case

“Two Brothers” (Dark Horse) — Gabriel Ba

Are there no other publishers of graphic novels except Dark Horse?

MAGAZINE FEATURE/ILLUSTRATION

*Anton Emdin

Rich Powell

Julia Suits

ONLINE LONG FORM COMICS (Graphic Novel)

Drive— Dave Kellett

**The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo— Drew Weing

Octopus Pie— Meredith Gran

ONLINE SHORT-FORM COMICS (Strips and Panels)

Bouletcorp—Boulet

Kevin & Kell— Bill Holbrook

**Sheldon— Dave Kellett

NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION

*Anton Emdin

Glen LeLievre

Elwood Smith

BOOK ILLUSTRATION

“Smick” — Juana Medina

**“Sidewalk Flowers” — Sydney Smith

“The First Case” — Gitte Spee

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