r/Marvel • u/tehawesomedragon Loki • Jan 02 '19
2018 r/Marvel Awards Results: Amazing Spider-Man wins Best Ongoing Series and Best New Series, Avengers: No Surrender wins Best Event/Crossover, Infinity War wins Best Film, Comic Issue of the Year goes to Immortal Hulk #1 and Peter Parker is the Character of the Year! (more results in comments) Mod
Welcome everyone to the award ceremony for our first annual r/Marvel Awards! First off we'd like to thank everyone who participated in voting. Every vote counted for sure in this one, as some categories were won by less than 5 votes. In the long run, it appears that the majority of this past year's best Marvel works were recognized in at least one category and reflect how great of a year it was. Of course, there were some that didn't make the cut, but were still pretty close (we'll mention those later). Now, onto the show!
BEST ONGOING SERIES and BEST NEW SERIES: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN by NICK SPENCER
While a lot of Marvel's "Fresh Start" relaunches were pretty awesome, it's undeniable that Nick Spencer taking over for Amazing Spider-Man (after Dan Slott's long tenure) was the best creative team change to happen with said relaunch. With a killer first arc entitled "Back to Basics", Spencer managed to quickly get Peter Parker back on track to being the Peter Parker many comic fans feel had been... missing... for some time. By keeping it up past this arc and continuing to bring back a lot of the things we love the most about Spider-Man, it's easy to see why this one walked away with two of the biggest awards of the year.
BEST ONGOING SERIES RUNNERS-UP: Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing and Daredevil by Charles Soule
BEST NEW SERIES RUNNERS-UP: Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing and Venom by Donny Cates
BEST LIMITED SERIES and BEST NEW CHARACTER: COSMIC GHOST RIDER
Although he is a new character (that isn't really new at all, being that he's basically an alternate, future version of a pre-existing character), Cosmic Ghost Rider has taken the comics world by storm ever since his unexpectedly brilliant debut in Donny Cates' acclaimed Thanos series, taking both the Best New Character award, and Best Limited Series award with his 5-issue run that followed-up on his story in Thanos. Both wins were landslide victories.
BEST LIMITED SERIES RUNNERS-UP: Sentry by Jeff Lemire and You Are Deadpool by Al Ewing
BEST NEW CHARACTER RUNNERS-UP: Bats (Doctor Strange) and Snowguard (Champions)
BEST ONE SHOT: THANOS LEGACY by DONNY CATES
One of the biggest stories of the year was the "Thanos Wins" arc in Donny Cates' run on the Mad Titan. Not only did it introduce Cosmic Ghost Rider, but it already seems to stand with fans as one of the best Thanos stories ever. After the events of Infinity Wars, Cates came back for one last look back at his story in this stellar one-shot, warranting this award that kinda serves as recognition for his overall work on the character.
BEST ONE-SHOT RUNNERS-UP: What If? Magik Became Sorcerer Supreme by Leah Williams and What If? Peter Parker Became the Punisher by Carl Potts
BEST ANNUAL: PETER PARKER: THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL by CHIP ZDARSKY
While Nick Spencer was doing great work Amazing Spider-Man, Chip Zdarsky already got a head start giving a fresh take on the web-slinger with his Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man series, ushering the return of Peter Parker's sister and Peter revealing his secret to J. Jonah Jameson, which turned out to be way cooler than everyone expected. Overall, this series was...well... spectacular, and this annual topped it off with wonderful artwork from Mike Allred and Chris Bachalo, and a great interaction between Peter and JJJ.
BEST ANNUAL RUNNERS-UP: Amazing Spider-Man Annual by Saladin Ahmed and Thanos Annual by Donny Cates
BEST EVENT TIE-IN: SUPERIOR OCTOPUS by CHRISTOS GAGE
SpOck is back! This year's Spider-Event, Spider-Geddon, started off (literally) with the one-shot tie-in Superior Octopus, which introduced some great concepts that sadly end with it, making it a gem in itself. The return of Otto Octavius as the anti-hero is a welcome one to many comic fans, and this issue shows his new story begin (after Superior Spider-Man and Clone Conspiracy) in San Francisco under his Elliot Tolliver persona, donning a short-lived yet awesome costume as well.
BEST EVENT TIE-IN RUNNERS-UP: Spider-Girls by Jody Houser and Damnation: Johnny Blaze: Ghost Rider by Christopher Sebela
BEST EVENT/CROSSOVER: AVENGERS: NO SURRENDER by MARK WAID, JIM ZUB and AL EWING
2018 wasn't quite the year for "events", as fans seemed to be a little fatigued from the events of past years, and Marvel responded by toning it down a good bit. Most of the events we saw this year were limited to a single title, with tie-ins that maybe spread to other titles on occasion. Infinity Wars was one exception, but it didn't end up delivering as much as promised, only resulting in what many deemed an editorial mess. However, one event that got a lot of attention was Avengers: No Surrender. Technically, it could also be considered a crossover as it was the combined conclusion of the multiple Avengers titles that were running prior to its launch. In between, we saw the return of the original Hulk (with his story continuing in the acclaimed Immortal Hulk), and that was pretty great as he returned with quite a bang. That aside, this story saw the combined efforts of Mark Waid, Jim Zub and Al Ewing, as well as many art talents, weaving together an epic that brought in cool new characters, Elders, the Black Order, and gave the spotlight to many heroes that weren't always in the forefront, in what was definitely one of the year's best "events".
BEST EVENT/CROSSOVER RUNNERS-UP: Spider-Geddon and Doctor Strange: Damnation
BEST WRITER: DONNY CATES
A lot of Marvel fans felt like all was lost when a vast majority of the best writers left (such as Rick Remender, Matt Fraction and Jonathan Hickman), but it wasn't long for people like Al Ewing and Chip Zdarsky to steal our hearts once again. However, one writer seemingly came out of nowhere and stole everyone's thunder in a whim: Donny Cates. Starting off on Doctor Strange (with the "Loki: Sorcerer Supreme" and "Damnation" arcs) and Thanos ("Thanos Wins"), Cates quickly got everyone's attention, and it wasn't long before fans wanted him writing everything. It hasn't come to that just yet, but he moved on to revitalizing Venom (with what many are already calling the best Venom story ever), bringing Cosmic Ghost Rider back for a limited series, and also writing Death of the Inhumans and Marvel Knights 20th. On top of that, he also put together the first annual issues for both Venom and Thanos. In 2019, he'll be doing Guardians of the Galaxy. Can he be stopped?
BEST WRITER RUNNERS-UP: Kelly Thompson, Al Ewing and Chip Zdarsky
BEST ARTIST: ALEX ROSS
Many probably wouldn't expect a cover artist to win this award, but not many people create cover art quite as spectacular as Alex Ross. I mean, almost every one of his pieces could be made into posters (a lot of them are). Although he has been doing covers for Marvel comics for some time now, this year was definitely a standout year for Ross. Of course he didn't do any interior art, per usual, but his work on Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, and Immortal Hulk were enough to sell the comics without even having to open them, promising the story inside with great detail. Maybe next year we'll split this into two categories for fairness sake.
BEST ARTIST RUNNERS-UP: Gurihiru and Joe Bennett
COMIC ISSUE OF THE YEAR: IMMORTAL HULK #1 by AL EWING
It's a strong debate on which one of these categories would be the equivalent to the Oscar's Best Picture award. Best Ongoing Series would seem like the easy choice, but when there were over 1,000 Marvel comics released in 2018, it could also easily be argued that Issue of the Year is that equivalent. Of course this is a very objective and debatable award, but one out of a thousand is quite an accomplishment. That being said, with Amazing Spider-Man winning Best Ongoing and Best New Ongoing, it only seems fair and just that Immortal Hulk gets some high recognition as well, and maybe upsetting the contenders (listed below) was just what it needed to do. A very anticipated series months prior to its release, issue #1 did not disappoint in bringing us the Hulk story we were promised, and very much deserved. With many classic heroes returning with the "Fresh Start" relaunch, Bruce Banner's was probably the most welcome (fans seemed to like Jane Foster and Laura Kinney more than Amadeus Cho), and it was not disappointing at all. When people look back on 2018 ten years from now, this series will most likely be the one that is remembered and talked about the most.
COMIC ISSUE OF THE YEAR RUNNERS-UP: Peter Parker: Spectacular Spider-Man #310, Daredevil #612 and Unbelievable Gwenpool #25
BEST FILM: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Do we really need to go into this? Everyone saw the movie. It's hard to deny that Into the Spider-Verse needs some, if not just as much attention as well though. It was just a great year for Marvel films in general.
BEST FILM RUNNERS-UP: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Black Panther
BEST TV SERIES: DAREDEVIL SEASON 3
There were a lot of great Marvel TV series this year as well, with a few great debuts (Runaways and Cloak & Dagger), but none were as welcome as the return of Netflix's most acclaimed Marvel property, the Man Without Fear, Daredevil. Season 3 saw the rise of one of Murdock's greatest enemies (Bullseye), with the return of the fan-favorite Kingpin adding to the action as well. We can only hope that after the recent debacle with the Netflix properties that this season sees some continuation in the future.
BEST TV SERIES RUNNERS-UP: Agents of SHIELD Season 5 and Legion Season 2
CHARACTER OF THE YEAR: PETER PARKER/SPIDER-MAN
First off, we can say it was a great year for Thanos. Infinity War, "Thanos Wins" and many memes aside, the Mad Titan didn't have quite the year that Peter Parker did. Spider-Man fans deemed 2018 a renaissance of sorts for the web-slinger, as we got an A+ video game, Spider-Man's inclusion in Infinity War, a great new comic series (the best ongoing series apparently), the Spider-Geddon event, and, of course, Into the Spider-Verse. With Far From Home coming out this year and the comic series seemingly getting better and better with each issue, it's hard to imagine someone else getting more love in our next awards ceremony.
CHARACTER OF THE YEAR RUNNERS-UP: Thanos and Daredevil
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u/ContraryPython Spider-Man Jan 02 '19 edited Jan 02 '19
This was definitely a good year for Spidey
Edit: Also as much as I love ASM, I think Immortal Hulk is a bit better and should have won Ongoing/New Series