Hugo Awards

The 2015 Hugo Awards took place at the 73rd annual Worldcon in Spokane, Washington, on Saturday, recognizing achievements in science fiction and fantasy storytelling. Administered by the World Science Fiction Society, the awards are considered the most prestigious in their field, and many of this year's winners reflected the progressive edge of the genre --- a trend perhaps exemplified by the winner for Best Graphic Story (aka the comics category); Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal, by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt, published by Marvel.

This weekend, the Hugo Awards nominations were announced, and almost every category was affected by the "Sad Puppies" campaign, which encouraged anti-liberal voters to push specific works by conservative authors. While every award event with nomination voting has people pushing for votes in specific directions, this systematic approach to affect every single category and make it less about the quality of the work has made these nominations pretty useless. The good news is that the campaign had very little effect on the "graphic story" category, which covers comics, but the Sad Puppies voters did manage to get their one selection in that category into the nominations as well.

Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga continues to be honored in the awards circuit. After picking up three Eisner Awards at this year's Comic-Con -- sweeping the three categories for which it was nominated -- the title has now taken home the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.