The time has come, the Operative said, to do an awards column to ease the pressure of working in December! Besides, what entertainment outlet can get by without phoning it in and doing a clip show (which is all many awards shows are, really), between garish performances. So the winners of the first-ever Operative Word mackdown Awards are:

Honorable mention goes to Static Shock, entering its second season of production at long last. Check out www.dwaynemcduffie.com for more data, including info on Batman and Robin swinging through for a visit!

WORST DEATH SCENE:
GENOSHA, IN MORRISON'S "E IS FOR EXTINCTION." For months, Marvel and Morrison promised to kill more mutants in one issue than anyone had ever seen. Fans speculated, recalling the dripping aftereffects of the Morlocks in the Mutant Massacre. So when the island nation of Genosha was eliminated—in, what? Three pages?—most of the dead mutants had never been named. They died unmourned while somewhere, Kitty Pryde lives on, unmolested. It's just not right. Genosha deserved better, and Morrison and Quitely should be ashamed of themselves.

MOST IRRITATING PERSONALITY IN COMICS:
BILL JEMAS. From open letters to open wounds, was there anybody in comics more annoying than Bill Jemas in 2001? Oh sure, you can nitpick the Bendis-Larsen feud, you can chuckle at John Byrne or even wonder if Alan Moore is gonna show up in your living room in a puff of smoke and wicca posturing. But Bill Jemas takes the cake, from slapping his name on most high-profile Marvel works to threatening to write something himself to having that stupid haircut. I'm sure he's a wonderful person who gives to charities and cuddles puppies or what have you, but in public, Bill Jemas is the Howard Stern of comics, and this year's Smackdown Award committee sincerely hopes his plug gets pulled in 2002.

BEST SUBJECT MATTER FOR A VH1 "BEHIND THE..." SPECIAL:
THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES. What in the name of Jack Kirby is going on in the 31st century? The Legion was once a fun read—a group of super-powerful teens with mostly silly names, fighting menaces but keeping a hopeful gleam in their extraterrestrial eyes. Giffen took the team down a darker path, towards war and getting older, but the gleam was always there, and even in The Quiet Darkness, those were good stories. Things are different now. Legionnaires brought back the youth (and I loved the artwork), but the energy was manic, not hopeful. Gleam-free. Legion Lost, Legion Worlds...god, what a downer. If I wanna read about a shitty future, what can you offer me that Warren Ellis (among many other greats) hasn't already said? The new ongoing has just the teensiest spark of that gleam, but it feels endlessly downtrodden. Can't you just see Cosmic Boy and Night Girl chain smoking in tight leather and blowing smoke at the camera:

"It was a blast for a long time, y'know, but all good things and what not."

"I told Rokk I got tired of never knowing who he was gonna be when I got home. Would I be a statutory rapist, or the beau of an embittered war veteran? Would he be a jock from his magno ball days or just the sweet man I love? Who needs that kind of pressure, let alone trying to squeeze into that ludicrous outfit for those substitute wannabes?"

Carson Daly would weep, and so should you.

WORST WRITER:
FRANK TIERI. Writing this column has provided me with some extraordinary entertainment that I could not have had as a fan. Jimmy Palmiotti, for instance, loathes me because of his perception of my commentary. Tieri felt compelled to "answer" me on Usenet and "defend" himself. I have laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. Because through it all, I come back to the only common denominator worth mentioning: the work. Take every single Frank Tieri comic book, from Iron Man to Wolverine to Deadpool. Read 'em all. Wait ten minutes. Try to talk to anybody about one fascinating concept in there. If you can manage it—and I would bet you can't—the idea was probably lingering in the series before he got there. Every creation of his mind—the Shiver Man, Mister X, T & A—they all are drenched in cliché and wack juice. His work shows him to be Captain Been There, Done That. No writer in 2001 so consistently produced shitty work. Mister Tieri, this Smackdown is all you.

WORST SERIES:
THE MONARCHY. Once again I am forced to quote Vince Moore of Danse Macabre Studios, on this series: "It's like a monthly seminar on what not to do when writing a comic book." Dino Riders. Impossible Man. Flashes in the pan. Even Bay City Jive is almost tolerable compared to this messy, messy comic book. By all reports, Doselle Young is a nice guy—I dunno, I never met him. The book he—I suppose we still have to say "wrote," despite its rambling and imperceptible nature of the work—was without a doubt the worst series of the year, so it is with great humbleness (and with the hopes that my work does not suck as hard) that The Monarchy gets this year's Worst Series Smackdown Award. (But we do encourage Codename: Knockout to keep doing what it's doing, because it could win next year.)

CONCEPT MOST DESERVING OF REALLY CAREFUL DEVELOPMENT:
PLANET DOOM. Ever run into an idea, not necessarily a series, but just an idea, presented in the context of other stuff, that makes you think, "Ooooh, that's so cool. I hope they don't screw that up!" That's what flew into my mind when I first heard the words "Planet Doom." A perfect replica of the Earth, complete with deposits of oil, plutonium, vibranium, gold, platinum, diamonds...I started to drool over the possibility of mineral wealth and resources alone. Standing between Doom and the whole shebang? Knock-off Atlanteans who couldn't shine Attuma's boots and a bunch of reject extras from Road Warrior. It sounded like a cakewalk. Yet, months later, has Doom taken the world economic scene by storm? Has he amassed a vast thermonuclear arsenal? Has he created a new suit of armor cast in pure vibranium to replace that medieval relic he's been wearing since before Nixon was in office? Sad but true. Like Thanos, Doom's position as a "villain" prohibits him from ever growing up. Let Christopher Priest have this property for one year.

The honorable mention goes to The Power of Shazam. If DC would let me take the entire property and have the latitude Hitman had, they could rule the world.

THE "I HAVE THE MOST FUN JOB OF 2001" AWARD:
KEITH GIFFEN ON SUICIDE SQUAD. How cool is it to have Suicide Squad back: A book where you know somebody is gonna bite it in almost every single issue? Best of all, it's almost always some annoying jackass who deserves it. Every month, Keith Giffen gets to tap somebody on the shoulder and say, "time to go." Of course, he can't lay out the Scarecrow or dip the Parasite in acid, but it's still a lot of fun and there's a whole lot of people he's probably allowed to off. Do your thing, man, even though I'd have thought Big Sir was more durable than that. Oh well.

WORST FANBOY SEXUAL GRATIFICATION SCENE:
NICK FURY AND SIX ASIAN PROSTITUTES IN FURY #1. One of the reasons I liked Quentin Tarantino movies was because he was so gleeful in his usage of violence and silliness in tandem. I consider that fun. One of the reasons I loathed Quentin Tarantino movies was because periodically he latched on to a subcultural nugget and ran with it, beyond good taste, beyond logic, beyond sense and often beyond entertainment. I consider that bad. Okay, we get that Fury's an old-school, cold war hardass used to things a certain way. But when he had to order prostitutes? That's kinda sad. He's a suave superspy. And he had to pay to get some? What's up with that? The ability to handle six professionals, you can chalk that up to the Infinity Formula that keeps him tickin' along. But isn't it kind of a letdown to see him like that? If we'd have kept the PLEASE KILL THIS CHARACTER category, this would probably have qualified him for that. Tragic is what it is.

WORST SINGLE PAGE IN COMICS THIS YEAR:
MAGNETO, DOC OCK, KINGPIN AND DOOM IN ASM #36. The single worst page in all of comics in 2001, hands down. Magneto, IIRC, sank a nuclear sub he thought had aggressive ideas about him. The Kingpin has personally decided to end the lives of more people than most of us will ever meet. Doom ignored the drowning of millions on Planet Doom as a mere stepping stone in his plans. The very idea that these four would a) have been allowed down to Ground Zero, and b) would be blubbering like brokenhearted bitches on prom night is just abso-frickin'-stupid. J. Mike needed to keep this whole issue and get something going on Rising Stars.

BEST BOOK FOR KIDS TO READ THAT ADULTS CAN ENJOY, TOO:
IMPULSE. Is it the goofy, helpful look in Bart Allen's eyes? Is it his oversized feet? Is it his unruly hair? Or is it his near inability to think things through that almost always has hilarious consequences? Whatever it is, I love this book. Best of all, my little brother loves this book. We both find it vastly entertaining. Isn't that about the best thing in the world? What was the last book you knew of that could be enjoyed by adults and ten year olds alike? LSH in the Levitz/Giffen era? Giffen's JLI? This is good stuff. If you like the amusement of Defenders or Captain Marvel and you're not reading it, you're missing some yuks, I assure you.

THE "HOW DID THIS MAKE IT PAST THE PITCH MEETING?" AWARD:
BAY CITY JIVE. Guy doing the pitch: "Okay, see, we'll have this big Black guy, with a big Afro, and he'll be a private detective in the seventies, right? The chicks love him, he kicks ass, he's super cool and..." Editor: "Uh, isn't that Shaft?" Guy: "No, it's in the same spirit as Shaft! You know Blaxploitation is cool! Everybody loves it! It'll be a huge hit!" Editor: "Uh, look, dumbass, Blaxploitation hasn't made money in years, why do you think Tarantino has been so quiet since Jackie Brown? Whatta you, stupid?" Guy: "Well, I felt you might be resistant to the idea, so I brought my sister Candi. She's for you." Editor: "Oh...well...okay, let's get you on the editorial schedule!" Somebody, please kill this title.

Honorable mention goes to Codename: Knockout and Angel & The Ape, sweating and pissing over Vertigo's marginally good name.

THE "BLOOD SYNDICATE" MEMORIAL "SO CLOSE, AND YET, SO FAR" AWARD
VIOLENT MESSIAHS. Guns. Decent-looking female cop. Protagonist character with a very cool look, very Grendel-meets-Men-in-Black, with wacky stitches thrown in for chuckles. Violence. This book had so much going for it. Why did it get boring? Was it the shipping? Was it the plot? What was it about again? Just like Tiffany's career, what could have been so beautiful, could have been so right...

THE TIGHT SWEATER AWARD FOR MOST IRKSOME TEASE:
THE CRUSADES. The one-shot and the publicity material seemed so promising: "Medieval knight chops his way through San Francisco underground." Cool. However, after six issues, you realize that no real facts and/or answers are forthcoming, and that you're gonna spend most of the series with radio shock jock Anton Marx (imagine a watered-down Spider Jerusalem before he had an idea of anything), or staring at provocatively drawn pictures of his bed buddy Venus (when did Vertigo turn into a jiggle line?). This is the literary equivalent of blue balls. Those bastards!

CHARACTER MOST IN NEED OF PERMANENT RETIREMENT:
THREE-WAY TIE: LUKE SKYWALKER, CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SUPERMAN. I may be alone in this, but I frickin' hate these three characters. I grew up wanting to be Luke Skywalker, but after college, watching the movies again and again showed me he's a whiny, uneducated, hick dumbass. The fact that his ragtag group of schmucks ended up winning is more a statement of Imperial incompetence than the "power" of the light side of the Force. I'm sick of him, despite a decent turn in Star Wars: Infinities this year. Captain America, as the "symbol of freedom," irritates me since I know the ugly side of America, the side it shows most of the time, gun in hand, Bible in the other, demanding you see things its way or be considered evil or "the enemy." Captain America has turned a blind eye to this for decades: The "journey of discovery" that Green Lantern and Green Arrow took should have been taken by Steve Rogers. Christopher Priest has called him on this a time or two in Black Panther. Him I want dead really bad. Superman proved to me he's a relic in Action Comics #775, where Manchester Black called him on every antiquated concept Magog wanted to in Kingdom Come. Clark's response? I'm better because I wanna be. Somebody get me a Kryptonite bullet and I'll cap this fool myself. A pox on the lot of them.

THE CHUCK DIXON AWARD FOR OVEREXTENDING HIMSELF INTO MEDIOCRITY:
BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS. When I started thinking about writing comic books, I was fortunate enough to be in semi-regular e-mail contact with Christopher Priest, who has been in the game for more than two decades. I noted that I had a folder on my PowerBook with seven Marvel ideas, five DC ones and seventeen I had come up on my own. I asked him (and ended up asking several other pros, who all gave about the same answer), "How many books can somebody write a month?" The answer was two. And then only using a lot of organization. Seems that's about the limit on how many books most people can consistently write before the distraction or whatever sets in and they start slipping on something or other. So, lessee now...Ultimate Spidey, Ultimate Team-Up, Alias, Elektra, Powers (which is called "monthly" by most, but sometimes doesn't quite make it), a little Daredevil. There's at least one or two more I'm forgetting. Dial it back, Brian. Don't dilute yourself. Writing you can do when you're old; you don't need to make all the money RIGHT NOW. Get your stuff concentrated, not watered down and stretched out. For real.

THE "JEFF GOLDBLOOM MEETS WILL SMITH" INDEPENDENT'S DAY AWARD:
THE EXEC. Once again, the independents show the way. The Exec is the final chapter of their "Accounts Deceivable" triptych of one-shot comics (The Exec, The Taxman and Operator 99), and combines crisp artwork with a funny take on serious issues. Not quite the 2099 universe played for laughs, but it's in the zip code and damned entertaining with its megacorps, guns and fun storyline. Their operation, www.comicsconspiracy.com can point you to how to catch up.

THE MAKE IT HAPPEN IN 2002 AWARD:
This award goes to books that are on the verge of some serious isht, books I sincerely hope will maintain their quality and increase their sales, books that have shown status as contenders all year long, books that have done the damn thing and I strongly believe can rock the party next year. This is the bandwagon, and we've still got room for you here:

INDIE:
Queen & Country/G.I. Joe

MARVEL:
Black Panther/Thunderbolts (honorable mention for Captain Marvel)

DC:
Harley Quinn/JSA (honorable mention for Detective Comics)

CROSSGEN:
Scion (honorable mention for Ruse)

And that's our show. We wanna thank our host the Morningstar for letting us party in a fresh universe, the accounting of Archard and Bishop on Arcadia, the Scarlet Witch and Static for providing the special effects, our set decorator Patsy Walker, the Jedi Council for providing security in these paranoid times, and of course, our unswerving support from the White House and President Luthor. Have a good night, y'all.