Happy Sunday folks!

With the end of the year (and the decade!) right around the corner, I thought it best to start giving out awards. Since all the greatest awards have cute little names (Oscars, Tonys, etc., etc.) I thought it only fair that our awards at Semantink have a name too. So, with that in mind, I am giving out the first annual INKY awards. Huzzah!

Best Series (ongoing):WALKING DEAD (Image)- No other series continues to bring shock and surprise as well as the WALKING DEAD. Robert Kirkman can and will kill off any one at any time, so the reader is constantly on their toes. Charlie Adlard provides gruesomely perfect art as well. This book is a must read every month.

Best Mini-Series: WAR OF KINGS (Marvel)- Marvel has done a great job with their space operas the last few years, and this year continues that trend. WAR OF KINGS pitted the Kree against the Shi’ar in a battle royale and did it beautifully. Paul Pelletier does a great job of showing interplanetary ass-kickery, and nobody does a better job at interstellar warfare stories than Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.

Most fun I’ve had reading this year: Old Man Logan (Marvel)- There were plenty of great reads this year, but nothing was more fun than Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s tale of Wolverine in the future. A great concept, executed to perfection.

Best Writer: Grant Morrison- This was a tough one. Brian K. Vaughn has done a great job this year, making politics cool in EX MACHINA.  Geoff Johns made SUPERMAN readable again. Grant Morrison, however, has had a banner year. FINAL CRISIS, Morrison’s version of the semi-annual DC crisis finished up at the start of the year. Morrison followed up with another great installment of SEAGUY, and an awesome run on BATMAN AND ROBIN.

Best Penciller: Steve McNiven- Just look at the pretty pictures.

Best Inker: Oclair Albert: Oclair is the inker for GREEN LANTERN and BLACKEST NIGHT. Ivan Reis is a great penciller, but Albert’s inks make the pencils sing. He has a slick style that is perfect for s a space book.

Best Colorist– Dave Stewart- Stewart is the man behind the beautiful colors of the HELLBOY and BPRD books.

Best Cover Artist: J.H. Williams III- Williams has been doing beautiful work for years, but his covers for DETECTIVE have been some of the best of his career, as well as some of the best covers of the year.

Best Editor: Tom Brevoort (Marvel)- The man handles an insane load of titles for Marvel, from Spider-man, to the Avengers, to the Fantastic Four, and does a fine job with all of them.

Best Event: Blackest Night (DC comics)- Blackest night has been kicking butt and taking names since the first issue, and shows no signs of stopping. Anytime you have scads of undead rollin’ around and offing people, you are on the right track to awesome.

Best Big Publisher: Marvel Comics- Marvel wins based on it’s advancements in digital comics. The publisher signed a deal with several online comic book reader sites like Panelfly and Iverse to produce content for them. They also did a great job in 2009 with motion comics like SPIDER-WOMAN and ASTONISHING X-MEN.

Best Small Publisher: Top Shelf– These guys had a banner year. THE SURROGATES became a major motion picture and they landed Alan Moore and all his new projects (like the latest LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN project). It’s tough for anyone to top that.

Best Comic Book Movie: Watchmen- Given the choices this year, this one was easy. Wolverine was a hot mess and Whiteout was boring. Watchmen, while not perfect, was a beautiful translation of the source material. Jackie Earle Haley was chilling as Rorschach, and Zack Snyder obviously put a lot of heart into making Watchmen the best movie it could be,

Best Original Graphic Novel: ASTERIOS POLYP- Dave Mazzucchelli spent years on this book and it shows. The story is nothing earth-shattering, but the way Mazz uses color and shape to dispaly tone and emotion is.

Best Publication Design: Absolute Editions (DC)- The Absolute edition books that DC puts out are always the cream of the crop for story reproduction. The — format allows the art to shine and only the best stories make it to Absolute format.

Book I’ve been waiting forever for: Planetary #27- Thank you Warren Ellis and John Cassaday for making it worth the wait.

Technological breakthrough that will shape the next decade: Digital comic book readers- Over the next 10 years, comics aren’t going away, but they are going to evolve into the digital realm. This year was a huge step forward in the evolution of comics with apps for smart-phone comic book reading and companies like Longbox digital gearing up to put comics online.

Best comic viewing app: Iverse- There are several great apps for comics, but none are as clean and easy to use as iverse. Iverse also has the largest catalog of books, which is a big deal.

Publisher to look out for in 2010: Semantink–We are hot!

Congratulations to all Inky award winners! Your statuettes are in the mail. To all of our readers out there, thanks for tuning in, I’ll see you tomorrow.