Yow! Since I’m back to blogging, it’s time to announce that “Star Trek: The Last Generation” has been nominated for Best Series of 2008 by the legendary and longest-running SF/comics talk show, The Chronic Rift!
The ‘Rift started out as a cable TV chat show in New York City in 1989, and now 20 years later can be heard worldwide through its podcast edition thanks to the magic of the Internets. Its annual recognition of science fiction, fantasy and horror storytelling, The Roundtable Awards, tips its hat to the top genre films, comics, TV shows and prose fiction of the year.
Last Generation has been named a “Best Bet” and “Pick of the Week” by Wizard Magazine–sort of the Rolling Stone of the comics biz, for the uninitiated–as well as received stellar reviews from Wizard, Ain’t It Cool News, TrekWeb, Roddenberry.com and a wide array of other top SF and comics sites, but this is the first time that it’s actually been up for an industry award.
From the official blog of the show:
We release the list of nominees for this year’s Roundtable Awards ceremony…
Best Comic Book
All-Star Superman
The Amazing Spider-Girl
Locke & Key
100 Bullets
Star Trek: The Last Generation
OK, let’s see. All-Star Superman is from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Amazing Spider-Girl is the cult hit written by former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco. Locke & Key is the breakout series from Stephen King’s son Joe Hill. And 100 Bullets is from WonderCon Guest of Honor Brian Azzarello. So, yeah…I think you’d need a degree in quantum physics to chart the likelihood that Last Generation will take home the trophy. (Maybe in an alternate universe… *rimshot*)
Joe Hill
No, seriously, I’ll say it right now, and mean it, that it’s an honor just to be nominated. IDW, which publishes Last Generation, had been developing Locke & Key during my time as an editor there, and even though I had no involvement in producing the series, I thought it was far and away the most impressive thing we had published. Joe Hill himself is an incredibly fertile creator, able to rattle off story pitches like the gavel dude at a farm auction, and yet hold your attention rapt as if he’d already written the entire story in his head.
Tom DeFalco
At the same time, I’d love to see Tom DeFalco get the nod, since an interview I did with him back in 1987 had been my first professional comics work while I was still a cubling journo in college, shortly after he became editor-in-chief and took me on a personal tour of the fabled Marvel offices in New York City.
(Regrettably, I no longer have any copies of the interview myself; though if I have a chance to sort through my parents’ old storage unit next time I’m on the East Coast, I’ll try to track it down. I think it was headlined, “An Interview With Captain Marvel”–oh, so clever.)
Marvel Masterworks, Vol. 1
After our conversation, which lasted very nearly all day, Tom even gave me a special thanks in the Acknowledgments of the very first edition of Marvel Masterworks (Amazing Spider-Man) that came out at the end of the year–my very first professional comics credit. He also put it into the concurrently-produced second and third volumes, The Fantastic Four–which reprinted the issues that launched the Marvel Universe–and The X-Men, which became the Marvel Universe’s top-selling blockbuster franchise.
Coincidentally, one of the other names in the Acknowledgments, also just a fledgling creator at the time, will soon be taking the reins at one of the publishers I’ve worked for. (I can’t say who or which, since it hasn’t been announced yet, but you’ll hear about it soon enough. It’s a pretty big deal.)
Is that--can that be?--Yes, it's our beloved KRAD, fresh from his date with Molly Ringwald.
Also coincidentally, the very first episode of Chronic Rift two decades ago featured my future pal and celebrated author Keith R.A. Decadido, who I would eventually hire to write Star Trek for me at IDW, but here looking as fresh-faced as the day he cracked open his first comic. Manscaping advice, Keith: lose the beard that you’ve now treasured for so long–DeFalco and Hill already have you beat.
None of which has anything really to do with being nominated for Best Series of 2008–except to say that being 21 years old, still in college, touring the Marvel offices and interviewing the editor-in-chief, then seeing my name in the credits of a series of deluxe hardcover books that reprinted some of the most seminal issues in comics history…I sure as hell felt like a winner.
It does feel great to be nominated in such prestigious company, so a huge thanks to those involved in the process who held my series in such high regard. For everyone else, the Roundtable Awards get announced at a ceremony April 6, so be sure to send me your condolences. 🙂
Andrew Steven Harris 