The Harvey Awards have been under a bit of scrutiny ever since they announced the 2008 nominations last week. The root of the ruckus stems from concerns of vote-stacking, as there were several “surprising” nominations this year. One of which was in the BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION category, where a new blog, Meanwhile…Comics!, was honored. The questions don’t come from from the merit of the work, but more of its eligibility because it debuted just this year (the nomination period is for 2007). And now it seems some of those concerns are coming true. I talked with Meanwhile…Comics! contributor Jason Richards, and he said the Harvey Awards were withdrawing the nomination.

“Evidently there were some transposition errors in the ballots,” Richards says. “Seems there was a biography of Milton Caniff released last year called ‘Meanwhile…’ that was supposed to have received the votes. Turns out our blog wasn’t even eligible for nominations because we didn’t exist until this April and eligibility was for Jan-Dec of 2007.Although, the guy said he felt bad because he thought our writing was great and our format was unlike anything else out there. So…maybe next year?”

Indeed.