Friends of Lulu Award Winners Announced, New Website, Organization Followup

Friends of Lulu logo

This year’s Friends of Lulu awards were presented last night at the Long Beach Comic Con. According to an official source, 1164 people participated in the online voting. The winners are:

Leah Adezio Award for Best Kid-Friendly Work: Diana Nock: The Intrepid Girlbot

Best Female Character: Ramona Flowers: Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O’Malley

Kim Yale Award for Most Talented Newcomer: Kathryn Immonen, The Runaways

Lulu of the Year: Kate Beaton

Woman of Distinction Award: Lauren Sankovitch, editor, Marvel Comics

Female Cartoonists Hall of Fame: Alison Bechdel

That’s a good, well-recognized slate, with many of the odder choices I feared not winning, thankfully. The only one I got right was Kathryn Immonen — I’m not a very good predictor, I’m afraid.

The full announcement can be found on the group’s new website (link no longer available), which should provide an official source of information going forward.

In other Friends of Lulu news, Kynn Bartlett, one of the acting board members, provided this statement regarding my questions about the group’s future:

Obviously, the question of our IRS status is one of the most important issues facing the acting board as we move forward. As soon as we’ve got the all the details worked out, we’ll be making the appropriate announcements; until then, we’re asking people to hold off on donations until our tax status is formalized.

We will be working on appointing an interim president until such time as we can have elections. Right now I don’t yet know when that will be, but there is a sense on the acting board that we want to move forward on this as soon as we are able and not maintain the current situation.

One of our primary goals is the regeneration of the board and moving from our acting board of volunteers to an elected, representative board structure. We’re looking for women (or even men!) inside and outside of the comics industry who want to help us chart a new path for 2011 and beyond. Our acting board right now is just an interim group, and that’s why we are concentrating on metaphorically tidying up the Friends of Lulu clubhouse to make it ready for the future board. We don’t want to tie their hands, limit their creativity, or commit them to activities before they’re even here.

That makes sense, and I appreciate her response to me. It is going to take a lot of patience and hard work to get the group back on firm footing and tidy up most of the messes, but it sounds like the acting board recognizes that and is proceeding slowly but steadily.



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