A writer for over twenty years, Tony spent over ten years working internationally for a variety of television, radio and magazines as a feature and script writer, winning several awards doing so.
In 2003 he returned to comic writing, and since then has written for Marvel Comics, Walker Books, AAM/Markosia Entertainment, Panini Comics and Titan Publishing, for properties such as X-Men, Amazing Fantasy, Doctor Who, Starship Troopers, Wallace & Gromit and Shrek. With 'Two Drunk Guys In A Bar' partner Dan Boultwood he has created The Gloom for APC and in 2006 he adapted G.P. Taylor's The Tizzle Sisters and Eric and the bestselling children's book Shadowmancer. His creator owned book, Midnight Kiss, was nominated for an Eagle award in 2006.
His upcoming work includes Hope Falls for AAM/Markosia (again with Dan Boultwood), Dodge & Twist for AiT/PlanetLar, Warrior Nun Areala: Excommunicated for Antarctic Press, Robin Hood: Outlaw's Pride and the comic adaption of Anthony Horowitz's Raven's Gate series, both by Walker Books. He's also the writer of the new IDW series Doctor Who: The Forgotten with Pia Guerra on art.
The Award Goes To...
By Tony Lee
So I'm just back from my whirlwind world tour (and by that I mean the USA and Switzerland) and I get the email.
'Hey Tony, are you and Dan going to be doing the Golden Champagne Glass Awards this year?' It asked. 'Because we might have something for you...'
Now, those of you who have either read this column since the early days, or even those of you who came in late and have since spent their time re-reading every column I've written (and there have been quite a few, you know) in some stalkerish fashion will know that there is indeed a 'thing' that Dan Boultwood and myself have done a couple of times in the past, a guerrilla award ceremony of sorts that we've done at a stupidly late time on the Saturday evening. And these (as if you haven't guessed already) are called the Golden Champagne Glass Awards.
But I realised that I don't think that I ever explained where they came from, or why we did them...
Let's travel back to 2006. Midnight Kiss was up for an Eagle Award, as Best British Comic (Colour) , but we knew that we weren't going to win. After all, we were up against the juggernauts that were 2000 A.D. and Judge Dredd: The Megazine, two magazines that I have since written for, but back in '06 but were a distant dream.
Now there's an annoying little rumour, urban comic legend even that Dan and I primed Dez Skinn, who we had been drinking with to start his diatribe against Rebellion and pitch for the 'little guy', even Dez himself says it's our fault for getting him drunk; but although we can hold our hands up to that (if I recall correctly, this was the year that Dan and I had decided to dress up in top hats and entered the back of the hall, arm in arm singing 'Get me to the church on time' from My Fair Lady, so you can get a vague idea of how much we'd already drank. I was drinking pints of whisky and American ginger ale, each drink bought was simply topped up in the pint glass) we can't claim credit for his rant, which was already going off before he even stepped onto the stage. In fact, we didn't even realise he was announcing my award before Mitch Benn called him up.
But we had some flack from the Eagles that year, and a comment was made on a message forum by someone involved that we 'made a mockery of an established award ceremony' on our three occasions to the stage (we were announcing categories on behalf of Markosia, due to the fact that Harry Markos didn't have a top hat and was quite obviously full of fail) and this rankled with us, especially as the awards themselves ran over, had countless screw ups and to be honest? Had some very dubious winners. But, we carried on partying.
During late 2006 and the turning of the year to 2007, the conversation of the Eagles came up again on a message board, and I stated my thoughts about the Eagles. I had one concern, and that was that there was silliness bunching best Direct Market (i.e. only through Diamond) with comics like 2000 A.D. that could be bought in WH Smith or any other UK newsagent. I'd suggested a split, and have one for Best Direct, and one for Best Newsstand, that way other magazines like Panini's Spider-Man could have a shot as well. But this wasn't taken in the spirit of things and by pure coincidence, I was effectively fired from Comics International at the same time. But to be honest, this was more due to Mike Conroy's belief that as the newly announced Group Editor of Markosia, I'd be a bit too biased on their front in my columns. Which even though I'm not the Group Editor any more, I still am. And will in fact be talking about such a book later...
I was pissed off. But I spoke to Mike about this, and I walked away from the situation. I have a lot of respect for Mike, and he has a bloody hard job in the business, and so when I took up this column (then at Silver Bullet Comic Books) I didn't use it as a soapbox to kick off. But I was still pissed off, and I felt that a stand had to be taken against the Eagles somehow. Something passive aggressive, something humorous and obviously light in heart. And the Golden Champagne Glass Awards were created.
Why Champagne Glasses? Because they were plastic, cheap and easy to spray. The bases were upside down flower pots painted black, and over the actual award ceremony they flaked off anyway. But this didn't matter. The point was that suddenly – if the Eagles were the BAFTAS? Then we also had our own Razzie awards.
But then again, we didn't. Because again, we were doing it for fun and we didn't want to annoy anyone. These were just in-joke awards for mates. But then it snowballed out of control—for Steve Saunders, then of All The Rage posted it in his column and then suddenly we received hundreds of emails, all suggesting their own thoughts. Some of them could be used, some were discredited out of hand due to logistics. me and Dan like to think of this less as a democracy and more of a tyranny—the Judges decision is final. And influenced by votes and blatant bribery.
And so, on the Saturday night we sneaked to the bar, grabbing the area around the television (where we were watching the Eurovision Song Contest) and waited. The Eagles were expected to be finishing around 10:30 p.m., 11 p.m. at the latest, and we had a bag of awards to give out after.
The problem was however that once more, the Eagles were an administrative disaster. The food was late, the awards later – I didn't even go in this time to see if I'd won the award I'd been nominated for – and by the time Dan and I came back down in our three piece suits to host the awards, with Skinner, the indubitable manservant of Shed Manor as our bodyguard, we found that apart from being over, they were only just half way, and people were already leaving and asking when we were starting. But we held our horses, and waited. And the moment the confirmation was in that the Eagles were over? We started ours. Our little amusing, piss-take awards that included such categories as 'Gayest Gay Man in Comics' and 'Fan Most Likely To Commit Murder In Our Name'. We announced the start and watched the people wander over.
And keep wandering over. By the time we'd started, we had almost half the bar in our corner, all eager to see what we were doing...
The entire thing went past in a blur, but I remember a lot of cheering, Liam Sharp sprinting across the hotel reception to gain his award, Craig Johnson's animal scream of triumph when he (as Silver Bullet Comic Books) beat Newsarama for Best Website and the delight in little Bevis Musson's eyes when he won his award. We knew we'd be back the following year.
Amusingly, we were told that night that Mike Conroy was seriously considering having us run the Eagles the following year, but this proved to be another urban legend.
And so six months later, Dan and I started to consider what to do with the following year's awards. After all, we'd enjoyed them. But at the time we were also rather irritated with the Eagle Award nomination process. You see, the way the Eagles work is that they're voted by the people, based on nominations by people. Which meant that you could nominate yourself up, it'd come up on the screen and suddenly everyone was running around going 'Look at me! I've been nominated for the Eagle Award for Best Writer! Wheeee! ' and suchlike. But it didn't mean this. What it meant was that you were nominated to be nominated. And, when the gates closed, the top five nominations went through to the actual 'nomination' round.
And here's where the problems started. Because we (that is, Dan and I) had a disproportionate amount of people nominating us, due to me saying 'hey, vote for us' in this column, for example. And, like, having fans who actually gave a shit about us. And Mike Conroy, allowing other people to sort out the nominations felt that some of the categories (Midnight Kiss in best trade, Dan Boultwood as Favourite Artist, me as Favourite Writer, Hope Falls as Favourite Miniseries) were a little 'off' and so removed them. I went ballistic. Rich Johnston went on the warpath in Lying In The Gutters – and Mike held his hands up and apologised, partly for the fact that Dan lost his nomination (his well fucking deserved nomination) but mainly because a mention that we'd been removed for 'ballot stuffing' kicked off a backlash where we were basically accused of being a pair of fucking cheats. And there is a massive difference in going 'vote for me' which is electioneering, and actually bypassing that and doing all the votes yourself. But Mike did make the apology at the awards, so that was fine. Of course, Hope Falls was added onto the nominations category – too late for anyone to vote for it, and the replacement, Thor wasn't removed. Thor won.
And so we decided that screw this, we would do the Champagne Glasses again. And this time we would do them properly. We actually asked for nominations. We then asked for votes. We had our own little 'ballotgate' when one Podcast asked their listeners to vote for them and we had over a hundred emails in the space on an hour, mostly from the same person, all voting for this one podcast, ignoring all other categories.
But we left it open. Bevis Musson managed to get himself nominated in every single category somehow, and even won a couple of awards in the process. And more importantly, we were the first awards to actually award Paul Cornell with 'Best Writer'. Of course our other 'we saw him first, guys' winner, Jamie McKelvie, who's now working for Marvel and DC Comics (he won Best Comic Created By A Friend: Surburban Glamour) also managed to break the award while 'being a Dalek'.
The Eagles? Once more went terribly overtime. People misread awards, people didn't attend to collect their awards, and the ceremony had lost its lustre.
But, once more, the section of the Ramada Bar that we had taken was cordoned off by throngs of bodies. And people were actively taking interest. Dave Gibbons, still stunned that he had won the Eagle for 'Favourite Letterer' over people like Todd Klein actually came to accept his Golden Champagne Glass for 'Lifetime Achievement' and even gave a heartfelt speech. And then, as ever, it was over. But this time with less flaked black paint, as we'd learned our lesson this time.
Mike Conroy surprised the five people in Bristol who didn't already know by stating that he was stepping down from the Eagles, and that Cassandra, his daughter and already a well loved mainstay of the UK comic's scene would be taking them over in his place. Right there and then Dan and I threw our support behind Cassandra and stated that we would be doing no awards in 2009 as we didn't want to cause her inaugural awards any problems. And life went on.
Until this email.
You see, this year at Bristol, the Eagles aren't happening. Basically, due to renovations and suchlike, the dealers hall has had to come 'in house' so to speak, and the large hall where the Eagles, larger panels, Hypotheticals etc were held has had to become the de facto dealers hall. Which means no evening meal. No award ceremony.
And so there was a discussion somewhere. I know this because at least two people came to me about this. The Park Suite, the other room for talks was currently empty on the Saturday night. And, it seemed that popular consensus was that Dan and I could do a 2009 Golden Champagne Glass Awards. A proper one. With an audience and everything. We could be the award ceremony of Bristol. We were very excited.
And then we paused. Because the Golden Champagne Glass Awards was never for personal gain or aplomb, it was for shits and giggles. A laugh in a bar. A two fingers up at award ceremonies who forgot the 'little guy'. And to actually hold the awards in a room? It would be de-fanged. It would lose the term 'guerrilla'. And so we had to apologise and say that no, although we would love to use the room for something, possibly to do with the launch of Hope Falls or something like that, we couldn't hold the awards there, if indeed do the awards at all this year.
But there is still that thought, that niggling thought in the back of the head that says 'you could still do them, you know. You could – you could still do them in the bar. '
But probably not. Maybe. Who knows. You'll know if, at 11 p.m. on the Saturday night you see Dan and I, dressed in cravat and morning suit, walking across reception with a bag full of gold...
Now, once more – you might have forgot, so let me mention once more that Hope Falls is finally coming out in May as a collected trade, with an introduction by comics celebrity chum Ben Templesmith. Now this is incredibly important to us because we've had literally hundreds of people ask us for this over the last couple of years and we've always had to go 'no idea'. But now we not only know that it's coming out in May, we also know that it needs to be sold well through Diamond.
Markosia are taking a big risk with this and we have to sell a minimum of four hundred trades through Diamond for them to actually feel that Markosia have the love that Diamond seem to need. And so I ask you now, each and every one of you. If you've loved my other work, my Doctor Who comics, my Midnight Kiss comics, anything - please, please please order this book. It is incredible. We have movie people looking at it and they need to know that it is loved as well. This needs to break even with Diamond more than anything I have ever written before so that Dan and I can move on with other things together.
All we ask is that you go into your local comic store, or your preferred ONLINE comic store in the next week or so, ones that use Diamond to buy their stock, and ask for MAR094036: HOPE FALLS TP. This is the order code that Diamond gets, so they will see what we get ordered from them. In May, the orders that Diamond get will be filled and sent to those stores. If you have a good relationship with that store, tell them that they can see the first episode of Hope Falls, online, for free as a sidebar on my website, www.tonylee.co.uk - in fact if you're not sure yourself, go have a read. This comic was Eagle Award nominated. I was Eagle Award nominated as Favourite New Writer because of it. It truly is one of the best things I've written and I want, no, need to see it out there.
There's a Facebook group too - go and join. We're over four hundred people currently – I want more.
If you have a good relationship with the store, ask them to buy two, and take the risk of putting one on their shelf, next to the Doctor Who books I write.
But please, please, please don't walk away from this. I've had so many 'wait for the trade' comments while the book came out. Okay. You've waited. Now it's here. So please, prove to me that you're a man / woman / furry cosplayer of your word and order this amazing book. If only to be a Ben Templesmith completist.
And here is my offer. And feel free to pass this around. If Hope Falls sells over five hundred copies through Diamond (which actually isn't much) – and we'll get the numbers in late April – then I will stay sober for the entire Bristol Comic Con – including the Friday night.
That's right, not a single drop of alcohol will touch my lips over the convention. I will drink soda water or coke only. Maybe a red Bull. But nothing more.
So, if you really want to fuck with me? Make people buy this trade. Take away my beloved convention booze crutch. I want this book to succeed THAT MUCH.
MAR094036: HOPE FALLS TP
And on that note, I'm off to bed. Next week is my ONE HUNDREDTH COLUMN, believe it or not – when you add up all the columns I've done here, my columns in Comics International and my Silver Bullet Comics columns (both called It's Only A Comic) – so I'll have to do something quite spectacular. Or perhaps just write some more random shit...
Until seven days, kiddies.
Discuss this column at the Only A Forum forum.
© 2008, Tony Lee