Oi you be a Dear - Australian Achievement of the Year

Australian artist, publisher, entrepreneur or event. Business or creative.

This type of category is always hard to fathom, hard to figure out - what's an achievement? What deserves recognition? What’s special and what’s matter of course? A lot of work goes on quietly behind the scenes, that no one sees or at least realizes how important that work is or could be. But in no real order, what springs to my mind.

Graeme (Anomic) McDonald's publicity for the 24 hour event
This year, the event went off really well, better then expected when you consider the shifts in domains and messageboards.However because of Graeme's media saavy, the challenge improved output/registration by 40% over the previous year, there was national print and radio coverage and alot of more bandwidth traffic.

Gary Chaloner and 2004 Ledger awards
Just in case some one accuses me of circle jerking - fuck off, I'm busy. Ahem - It was pretty well organised last year and whilst i did criticise it a bit, my whining was meet with sincerity and interest. I don’t think its perfect yet, the “holier than thou, glory hound” (an actual quote from someone) part of me won’t think its perfect until everyone of my demands is met; like I believe judges should receive booze money. Anyway, usually whining in this community or scene is met with more whining, until there's so much whining, it all ends in tears – which leads in to my next nomination – but more of that later. Back to the Ledger awards, I think Gary is building something that will only increase in creditability, stature, visibility and importance in the future.

Maggie McFee and the messageboard peace
Back to the whining, Pulp Faction doesn’t have that much of it. Whilst there is a small flare up every now and again, Pulp Faction is relatively civil and educational place to go. Imagine an American presiding over a place of peace and tranquility – though she does have numerous Australian lapdogs and they are the luckiest lapdogs ever. Ruff, scratch me more. Pulp Faction is a cool spot and it would be nice if there were more interviews, stuff like “Draw me a..”, “The monthly challenge” and the plethora of anthologies being organized through the messageboard is awesome. Plus its a great place to find out what's going on at the Comic Cafe this week!!
On a similar note, whoever runs Comics Lifestyle needs some recognition, it’s a real eye opener on what else is out there, outside the messageboard sphere..

Makepeace and the Monthly Challenge
Having seen at the least 4 other attempts at a monthly art challenge on various australian comic boards this is slowly taking off. And the actual output is consistently good so congrats to MakePeace/MikeDelight/Nickname (though I’ll be disappointed if all the regular participants of the monthly challenge are actually Makepeace aliases – though he should be recognized for the output).

Grug and the daily grind
He's a comic creating machine and i think the only Australian creator still creating a new page of comic a day. There might be more, I dunno. Doesn’t matter, he’s still a machine – with a beard.


Otherwise, Dave Blumenstien looks like he's doing a real good job at the New Castle Young Writers festival, I'm actually considering going to Newcastle instead of Supanova, but with them scheduled so close i may make it to both. Lookout! Also, yes, the whole point of being a comic book creator is making comics, but Troy Kealley's production and organistional work on Something Wicked is a decent achievement for a self published book, Operation Funnybone may also fall under this category.
Likewise, the patience and determination of Ben Howard's release of the Witch King book is also to be admired.

But of course the idea is that other people nominate what they liked. There's plenty of time (nominations finish early january) so check out www.phasetwocomics.com and buy stuff.
Otherwise get ye to the nomination forms and nominate.