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| Favorite memory from working on Sir Alfred No. 3: In the middle of what Robert Lowell calls "Skunk Hour" on August 29, 2013, I opened the curtains of my second story window and saw three raccoons. |
Sir Alfred No. 3 has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the category of Best Single Issue/One-Shot.
(A few remaining straggler copies are at Fantagraphics, or you can download a PDF for a small fee at Gumroad.)
Upon hearing the news, I began wondering whether the publisher, Alvin Buenaventura, no longer alive, had ever won any comic awards.
The Buenaventura Press Wikipedia site lists three nominations. In 2007, Kramers Ergot 6 was up for an Eisner for Best Anthology. That same year, Vanessa Davis was in the running for an Ignatz for Outstanding Artist for her book Spaniel Rage (and her work in Papercutter #4 from Tugboat Press). In 2008, there was an Ignatz nomination for Outstanding Series for Injury #2 by Ted May, Jason Robards, and Jeff Wilson.
But Alvin’s obituary also lists a 2006 Eisner nomination for Comic Art Magazine #8 for Best Comic-Related Periodical, and Google tells me in 2013 the monograph he edited, Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes, was nominated for an Eisner for Best Comic-Related Book.
So I could certainly be wrong, as I’m not so good at keeping track of these kind of statistics, but it looks like maybe he never won an award as a publisher, and it makes me wonder how much it even matters.
Alvin was enmeshed in a fair amount of feuds, which may also have been something of a factor.
For myself, the nomination validates to a small but very real extent a lot of the incomprehensible hermetic privation creating the comic, so I am honored to be on the list.