I'm a 2011 Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer finalist!!

Last night I was tooling around online and saw via The Hollywood Reporter that Alternate Reality Comics had been selected as one of the finalists for this years 2011 Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing Award! I wasn't sure if their list was the entire list of finalists (as their wording says "amongst the finalists"), but after seeing this list of finalists pop up on the official San Diego Comic-con International site and a couple of other sites, well joy and jubilation!

Every year the comic book industry has their own Oscars / Academy Awards, called The Will Eisner Award, also known as The Eisners, named after legendary cartoonist great Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit, and the graphic novels that include A Contract With God and The Dreamer. The Eisners are awarded to the best comics and graphic novels of the preceding year, with the winners being announced on the Friday of the San Diego Comic-Con (this years ceremony will be tomorrow night, July 22nd).

Since 1993, The Eisners also have a category called The Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing Award, which puts the spotlight on comic book stores by awarding one (there have been years in which there were two stores that won) as the best store in the U.S. / world. The amount of stores that enter and or are nominated varies every year, but based on the stores that I know were nominated (and almost no one knows how many stores are nominated from year to year, except for the judges, who change ever year), this year had an especially high amount of top notch stores and I've heard from several sources that making the selection for the finalists was especially difficult. I've seen a few of the videos (part of the submission packet) that some of the stores posted online in the past week and I'm very SURPRISED at some of the stores not amongst the finalists (including another Vegas store that entered, Maximum Comics), but I think this just illustrates that there are more great comic stores today than ever before and I just got a good roll of the dice.

Being a 2011 Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing finalist and getting this recognition from my peers is a great milestone in my 17 years (thus far!) of owning Alternate Reality Comics and I really could not have done this without the patronage / friendship of my beloved customers, the creators of the many wonderful comics and graphic novels that exist, and the publishers and distributors who make everything come together. I, like comic book store owners (and employees) everywhere, already am a winner every day we can keep our doors open talking and selling comics regardless as to who the ultimate recipient of the 2011 Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing Award goes to, but that's not saying that I wouldn't be uber happy to be THE winner this year! Huge thanks most also be given to this years judges for selecting Alternate Reality Comics as one of this years finalists and to Steven Matview, who produced my video for the submission packet when I was deadline crunching and my wife, Kate, Paul, and Ashleigh, who also helped greatly with said video.

Here's a link to my store video for those of you who haven't seen it yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7eSjr_-QtU