9:20 PM – Still haven’t started yet, looks like they’re starting a bit late. We’ll be online in a sec.

9:30 PM – Just about to start. Here’s a look at the awards room for you!

9:36 PM – Lights just went out and the 2009 Harvey Awards are underway!

9:40 PM – Opening speeches are underway. Special acknowledgments are being made to key BCC staff including Marc Nathan, head honcho of BCC. Also some of the key sponsors of the Harveys.

9:42 PM – Explaining on the online voting process. Between 800 and 900 eligible ballots were received. The highest total in recent memory! A new category is going to be included next year – works intended for a younger audience.

9:44 PM – Master of Ceremonies Scott Kurtz takes the stage amidst staggering applause! He knew at 9 he wanted to be a cartoonist and is the award-winning creator of PvP, which gets 200,000 readers a day.

9:45 PM – A new animated short featuring the Phantom, Dagwood and other comic strip characters parodying Alec Baldwin’s performance in “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Hilarious with Prince Valiant as Baldwin. “ABC – Always Be Cartooning.”

9:49 PM – Okay, NOW Kurtz actually takes the stage. Kris Straub (”Chainsawsuit”) is credited as helping out with the flash animation and voices. “I have just been informed that our attendance this evening did not meet Diamond’s minimum requirements and we have been dropped from their catalog. Too soon?”

9:52 PM – Presenting for Best Letter and Colorist is Barry Kitson. John Workman wins for “Marvel 1985″. Kitson accepts on Workman’s behalf.

9:55 PM – Kitson continues with Best Colorist. The winner is Dave Stewart for “Umbrella Academy: Dallas”. Accepting on behalf of Dave is Scott Allie from Dark Horse comics.

9:57 PM – Scott Kurtz introduces presenter and “Strangers in Paradise” creator Terry Moore to the stage to present Best Syndicated Strip or Panel. Some excerpts from Moore’s presentation: “I’m presenting Best Syndicated Strip or Panel, which I think is really cruel because anyone who’s talked to me for five minutes know that before I got into comic books, I tried to break into comic strips. As everybody knows, comic strips are just a brutal, competitive, body count is huge-business. Then you get home and you have to be funny in six inches. You keep submitting it and nobody likes your six inches!”

10:00 PM – The winner of Best Syndicated Strip or Panel is Mutts by Patrick McDonnell. Scott Kurtz is accepting. “Patrick wishes he could be here tonight but he’s not. So this one is mine.” –Kurtz

10:01 PM – Moore keeps the stage for Best Online Comics Work. Big uproar for every nominee announced here, including Scott Kurtz’s “PvP”. The winner is “High Moon” by Scott O. Brown, Steve Ellis and David Gallaher. Accepting are the creative team for “High Moon”.

10:05 PM – Jim Valentino, who gave Scott Kurtz his shot at Image takes the stage. “I will not be making fun of him tonight,” says Kurtz. Valentino is onstage pretending he just won an Oscar. Valentino is on stage presenting Best American Edition of Foreign Material.

10:09 PM: The winner is “Gus and His Gang” by First Second. “Gus and His Gang” is a French based comic. Moving right along to Best Inker. Lots of applause for all nominees in this category which includes Thor, Buzzboy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Darkness and All Star Superman.

10:10 PM: The winner is Mark Morales for Thor! He takes the stage amidst uproarious applause. His speech? “Thank you!” and he runs off stage.

10:11 PM: Time for Best New series, presented by Rob Schreck. The Best New Series category has 3 books by Zuda comics. The Harvey goes to…Echo, by Terry Moore. This is Moore’s first Harvey. “When I was in 7th Grade, I went through a shoplifting phase,” he says, amidst laughs. Moore can finally take a Harvey home without smuggling it out.

10:12 PM: Best Graphic Album – Previously Published. The winner is Nat Turner from Abrams Books.

10:15 PM: Rob Leigh presents the award for Special Award for Humor in Comics. The Harvey goes to…Al Jaffee for “Tall Tales”.

10: 17 PM: Best New Talent coming down the line, also presented by Leigh. The winner is…Bryan J.L. Glass for the acclaimed series “The Mice Templar” from Image Comics. Glass, running up to accept his award, trips on the way up to the stage. “I want to campaign that this changes to ‘Breakthrough Talent’ because I published my first written work in 1992,” he says. “A friend of mine said, ‘Well, yeah you’ve been here for 20 years, but your talent has finally caught up!’”

10:20 PM: Next up, after a snafu on the podium with the light comes “Mouse Guard” creator David Petersen presenting the Best Anthology award. The Harvey goes to….”Comic Book Tattoo”, edited by Rantz Hoseley from Image Comics. Joe Keatinge from Image accepts on Hoseley’s behalf. “Comic Book Tattoo” is the anthology inspired by the musical works of Tori Amos.

10:27 PM: The award for Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation is up next, with Petersen still onstage. The Harvey goes to…”Kirby, King of Comics” by Mark Evanier from Abrams Books.

10:29 PM: We’re more than halfway through the 2009 Harvey Awards! Still to come, Best Original Graphic Novel, Best Cartoonist and Best Single Issue.

10:29 PM: “Our next presenter is a Pioneer in comics,” says Kurtz “And by Pioneer I mean it’s possible he gave smallpox to the Indians. Please welcome Steve Englehart.” Englehart is presenting awards for both Best Domestic Reprint Project and Best Cover Artist.

10:32 PM: The winner of the Harvey award is “The Complete Peanuts” published by Fantagraphics Books. Scott Kurtz accepts, graciously, on behalf of Fantagraphics.

10:33 PM: Best Cover Artist is now underway. Lots of big names in this category including Frank Cho, Kenneth Rocafort and Alex Ross. The Harvey, though, goes to “Fables” cover artist James Jean.

10:35 PM: The next award is the Special Award for Excellence in Presentation. The Harvey goes to “Kirby, King of Comics” by Mark Evanier from Abrams Books.

10:38 PM: Best Original Graphic Album is next up, with the Harvey going to “Too Cool To Be Forgotten” from Top Shelf.

10:40 PM: Michael Flynn takes the stage to present a special Hero Initiative Presentation. The Hero Initiative Humanitarian Award this year goes to Neal Adams. For those that don’t know, the Hero Initiative is a nonprofit organization that helps comic veterans by providing financial aid for emergency situations, medical care and many other necessary needs. The room stands to welcome Adams to the stage.

10:45 PM: Adams details his return to comics. He’s handed in 90 pages to DC Comics about a certain caped crusader which is the beginning of a series of graphic novels. Adams illustrated a six-page documentary about Dina Gottliebova-Babbit, an illustrator during the Holocaust who in exchange for sparing herself and her mother from the gas chambers, did illustrations for Nazi death camp director Josef Mengele, known as “The Angel of Death.” The project with inked by Joe Kubert and contains an introduction from Stan Lee. Gottliebova-Babbit survived the Holocaust, along with her mother, and immigrated to the United States and became an animator. She recently passed away on July 29 of this year. Her paintings have not yet been returned to her by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Marvel has printed Adams’ story and Disney will be turning the biography into a motion comic.

10:58 PM: The ending of Adams’ speech – “I don’t know anybody in the comic book business that if I called upon them [to help with this project], they wouldn’t say yes. That’s what I like about the comic book business.”

10:59 PM: “Alright! Back to the chuckles,” says Scott Kurtz, getting back into the swing of things. Chris Staros, head of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, is presenting Best Continuing or Limited Series. This is a star-studded category with “All-Star Superman”, “Captain America”, “Mice Templar”, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Umbrella Academy”. The Havery goes to “All-Star Superman” by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly from DC Comics.

11:01 PM: Accepting on behalf of Morrison and Quietly is DC’s Bob Schreck.

11:02 PM: Chris Claremont is presenting the next award for Best Writer. “The guy who looked at Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic X-Men and said, ‘Do you know what this needs? More. Words.’” – Kurtz

11:04 PM: The nominees for this category include Grant Morrison, Ed Brubaker, Kyle Baker, John Gallagher and Jeff Kinney.

11:07 PM: The Harvey goes to…Grant Morrison for “All Star Superman”. Accepting on behalf of Grant is Bob Wayne.

11:08 PM: George Perez presents Best Artist. “You do not have to fill every cover with every hero from that company! Some of us can’t draw feet! If you couldn’t draw feet, there would be a lot of rocks and smoke on your covers.” – Kurtz

11:09 PM: A varied cast of nominees including Frank Quietly and Gabriel Ba, but also Kayle Baker, Jimmy Gownley and Jason Kruse. The Harvey goes to Gabriel Ba for “Umbrella Academy” from Dark Horse. Accepting on behalf of Gabriel Ba is Scott Allie.

11:14 PM: Best Cartoonist is up next, presented by DC Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne.

11:17 PM: The Harvey goes to… Al Jaffee for Tall Tales. This is the second win for Al Jaffee tonight.

11:18 PM: The last award of the night: Best Single Issue or Story presented by the always entertaining Brian Michael Bendis. “Sorry about my voice, but I made out with George Perez the day before the convention,” said Bendis. Perez took the stage with a cold when he presented the award for Best Artist.

11:20 PM: A fitting end to the Harveys, the award goes to “Y: The Last Man” #60 by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra from Vertigo Comics.

11:22 PM: What? There’s a secret award! The Hero Initiative takes the stage. They’ve raised over $100,000.00 at Baltimore alone. Marc Nathan is honored and thanked for his work organizing and running Baltimore Comic-Con for the past 10 years.

11:25 PM: Nathan takes the stage to a standing ovation and thanks the crowd for the award.

That’s it from the Harveys! See you next year!

The restaurant was a lot of fun, although the food wasn’t spectacular.  Truly the best part of the restaurant was the bar, which had a great selection of martinis.  Where the restaurant itself was geared towards families with super bright colors and massive murals featuring Marvel’s greatest heroes, the bar area was dimly lit mostly with black lights and the walls were covered with Marvel’s most dastardly villains.  The bar was truly a very cool place to visit if you were a comic fan and if I recall correctly, Los Angeles’ alt-weekly newspaper LA Weekly named it one of the Ten Best Bars in town the year it opened.  Or best bar for martinis.  It was the best of something, I know that much.  The “Monstrous Martini’s” had names like “Negative Zone,” “Asgard” and “Savage Land.”  There were also alcoholic beverages served under headings like “Curious Concotions” with drinks called “Journey Into Mystery” and “Dead of Night” or the “Web-Shooters” which were served in a small souvenir take-home beaker.  Drinks like “Clobberin’ Time,” “Gamma Slamma” or the “Dimension Distorter” could be ordered.

Recently I was going through my second room at home and found the menu for Marvel Mania Hollywood in a box.  Now, yes, clearly I’m a criminal — I snuck the menu out of the restaurant as a keep sake.  I’m certain I’m not the only one, but who could blame me?  It featured fantastic art from Mark Bagley, inked by Jesse Delperdang with colorists Paul Mounts and Bongotone.  Cross Grain Coneptual Design and fishbrain…graphic design pulled all that art together and created this fabulous menu.

Food items all had names that were similarly comic themed.  “Astonishing Appetizers” such as “Namor’s Calamari” or “Gambit’s Ragin’ Cajun Quesadillas” could be found on the menu, as well as salads with questionable names like “The Marvel House of Ideas Salad.”  There were plenty of “Super Hero Burgers” and “Stanwiches” to choose from, all served with “Fantastic Fries.”

But truly some of the best names for food were stuff like “Archangel Hair Pasta,” “Luke Cage Linguini with Mighty Meat Sauce,” “Mutants ‘N Cheese” which featured X-Men pasta, “Doc Ock’s Wok” stir fry and “Sub-Mariner’s Sesame Salmon.”

Then of course there was the “Stellar Sweets” deserts section which featured “The Galactus.”  Here’s the description:

“You’ll need to be the devourer of worlds to tackle this titan.  Twelve scoops of ice cream topped with marshmallow, hot fudge, raspberry and caramel sauce; nuts, cherries and whipped cream.  A titanic treat, perfect for any party or Super Hero family.”

“The Galactus” could have been yours for only $34.95.

Sadly, Marvel Mania Hollywood had a very short life span.  According to <a href=”http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/attractions/food_marvelmania.shtml”>this site</a> it opened on February 18th, 1998 and closed up shop September 10th, 1999 for “financial reasons.”

In the mean time, enjoy these camera phone photos of the menu.  One day, if I can find an oversized scanner to borrow, I’ll prep proper scans of this menu.  It really is a beauty.

With the success of the Marvel brand in the mainstream today, you have to wonder if Marvel Mania restaurants could succeed today?  The food would have to be a lot better, but I think it’s a possibility.

While last year looked good, we had a number of upgrades this year over last. To begin with, we utilized a different yacht this year, one that gave us greater room on the top deck with which to film. Lincoln Morrison, our director, took care of it all — from running sound, video and lighting, arranging the set and even snapping the occasional pic. I’ve included a couple of neat shots of what it looked like up there, plus a couple of shots of some guests we had out to the yacht. Look for more video and more pics in the coming days.

This is where Lincoln spent most of his time, popping back and forth from camera to camera, running audio and lighting.  In this shot you can see we’ve blocked off a lot of the background light as the sun was hitting us in weird ways.

Here’s a shot from behind our “set.”  The crappy knock-off statues from Tijuana in the foreground, a three person set-up and then the cameras and lighting equipment.

Lincoln snapped this shot when legendary horror actor Robert Englund visited the yacht.  You can see the scrim in the background, which was used for most of the two-person interviews.

And below are just two of the many photos we took on the yacht.  First up is Zach Qunito and below that is DC Executive Editor Dan Didio.  More soon.