Friends of Lulu Awards Move to Long Beach, Nominations Open to Public

Well, my guess was completely wrong: The Friends of Lulu Awards, according to this morning’s press release, will be held at the Long Beach Comic Con in October of this year. Friends of Lulu will also have a booth at the show and host a panel (subject not yet announced — I’d hope it would cover the organization’s future plans and goals). LBCC started last year, set up by former Wizard World staffers as an alternative to Wizard’s cancelled Los Angeles show. (Bummer, since it’s a West Coast (California) show, I can’t attend.)

The “official 2010 Lulu Awards page” is being hosted by another of FoL President Valerie D’Orazio’s websites, Comics Are for Everyone, the “official blog for the Comics Revolution 2012”. It’s a shame that the official Friends of Lulu site has no news about this exciting restart of the Awards, especially given the tight timeframe: Nominations for the Lulu Awards, open to the public, are due in two weeks, by August 23. Voting will start September 13 and conclude in time for the Awards, October 29. To be eligible, comics (or other work, such as reporting) must have been published in 2009.

(The more I think about it, the more curious I am about her using another domain to host the award nominations. To the best of my knowledge, D’Orazio set up the WordPress site that serves as the official FoL home, so she should still have access and the ability to update it. Having all the comic news sites link to her new site, as they’ve done because of the nominations hosted there, is certainly one way to instantly make the site visible across the net and improve SEO. She’s posted, at that site, “This blog is also the new temporary headquarters of the women in comics organization Friends of Lulu. Friends of Lulu’s mission and that of the Comics Revolution are in many ways similar, so for the time being news on both will be reported in the same place.” That may be convenient for her, but it muddies the non-profit’s mission by combining it with another, new group.)

D’Orazio has also posted (link no longer available) that the organization’s missing financial records have been located, which may mean that they’ll be in better shape to answer questions about their tax-exempt status, which still appears in jeopardy.