The Shusters honor Canadian comics and their creators - click here for this year's nominees.  The Outstanding Webcomic Creators nominees are:

• Michael Cho for Papercuts
• Scott Hepburn for The Port
• Karl Kerschl for The Abominable Charles Christopher
• Gisele Legace for Penny and Aggie
• Ramon Perez for Kikuburi and Butternut Squash with Rob Coughler
• Scott Ramsoomair for VG Cats
• Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza for Least I Can Do and Looking for Group
• Cameron Stewart for Sin Titulo

Now that the WCCAs are done, it's time to make sure nominations for the Eisners are in on time.  The deadline for submissions is this Friday, March 14, 2008.

The Eisner category of best webcomic is "open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2007. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form."  Send the URL and any necessary access information to jackiee@mindspring.com.

And although webcomics have not yet received much consideration in other categories, they won't get considered if they're not nominated.  Click here for more information on the other tentative categories and how to submit work to the panel of judges.

ALSO - the deadline for nominations for the Eagle Awards is also coming up - March 22nd. Click here to nominate a comic.

The 2008 WCCAs were announced today -- Phil and Kaja Foglio won Outstanding Comic for Girl Genius while webcomics veteran Meredith Gran won Outstanding Newcomer for her new webcomic Octopus Pie.  The Foglios took three total WCCAs this year, but Tracy Butler was a big winner too taking home 4 WCCAs for her work on Lackadaisy. 

Click read more for the full list of winners:

On February 22, 2008, the Create a Comic Project and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) were awarded a $2,000 grant from the Association of Schools of Public Health to help celebrate National Public Health Week.

Here's a pretty intense discussion of recent changes in the WCCAs at Eric Millikin's livejournal with Meaghan (Ocarina) who is actually married to current WCCA chairman Frank Damonk. Forewarned - lots of "drama" in there but I link to it mainly because I've seen almost zero discussion of the big change to the WCCA this year -- no genre categories.

This was by far the most memorable moment of the 2007 SPX -- Nicholas Gurewitch presenting the Ignatz award to (presumably) Chris Onstad for Achewood. After Nick announced the award, a character in an ape costume came to the front of the auditorium and pantomimed while Nick translated. The simean conveyed through Nick that he was thrilled from the top of his buttocks to be receiving the award.

Tom Spurgeon has the full list of nominees for this year's Ignatz Awards. The nominees for Outstanding Online Comic are Achewood by Chris Onstad; Grace by Kris Dresen; Persimmon Cup by Nick Bertozzi; Thingpart by Joe Sayers; and Wondermark by David Malki.

Newsarama has the list of Harvey Award winners. The winner for Best Online Comics Work was Nicholas Gurewitch for his webcomic Perry Bible Fellowship. The list of awards after the break:

A full list of the Eisner winners is available at The Comics Reporter today.

• Sam and Max, by Steve Purcell won for Best Digital Comic.
• American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang won for Best Graphic Album - New (which in Oscar Awards-terms would be for Best Original Graphic Album as opposed to the Graphic Novels adapted by collecting together monthly comics books).
• Hope Larson won Special Recognition for Gray Horses.