The list of this year’s Harvey Award nominees was released earlier this week, and left some scratching their head over some of them. The awards are voted on by comic professionals to recognize their peers.

As with most nominations, folks have their opinions on who was nominated, who was overlooked, and how some wound up in certain categories. It’s hard to list out all of the various quibbles, because there were so many… which seems par for the course when it comes to awards.

Paul McSpadden sent out an email earlier today entitled “2015 Harvey Award Nominees Clarification” that addresses some of the concerns.

Check out below for the email.

The Harvey Awards would like to address questions posed by the comics press and other concerned parties since the release of The Harvey Awards Final Ballot.

The Harvey Awards were formed over 28 years ago with the intent to enable the creative community to honor their peers. The Harvey Awards administrators, as well as fans, retailers, and convention professionals, have no vote. That is the guiding principle of the nomination ballot, and we work very hard to maintain that vision.

As with all Harvey Award categories, “Most Promising New Talent” and the “Special Award for Humor” are selected through the voting of the comics professional creative community exclusively. Beyond a publishing date in 2014, we provide no eligibility guidelines for works in these categories and, as such, we continue to rely on the judgment of our voters, and not impose arbitrary limits.

Our vetting process also leaves us confident that all nominations in the Best Original Graphic Album category are indeed eligible, containing enough new and revised material to meet the category definition.

The Harvey Awards committee is open to suggestions from the professional community and we welcome the input. As we do every year, we will review the Harveys voting process and identify areas where improvement can be made.

Thank you,
Paul McSpadden
The Harvey Awards

Hopefully that makes things a bit clearer as to how some people were nominated in their categories.