In 2006, voters chose
Eric Millikin's horror/romance comic
Eric Monster Millikin (then called
Fetus-X) as one of the top five finalists for the "Outstanding Romance Comic" award; however, it was disqualified by the awards' executive committee. The WCCA committee wrote that "Foetus-X's [sic] nomination for "Outstanding Romance Comic" does not comply with the Outstanding Romance Comic category's genre criteria" of "addressing issues of love and romance in their stories, settings and characters."
Fetus-X was disqualified despite the awards committee's position that "We never want to limit the voters choices in any way. ... It's been very important that we not 'water down' these awards by controlling the results ..." This move was roundly criticized, with
Comixtalk publisher Xaviar Xerexes saying "throwing out the Fetus X nomination a few years ago was a mistake, the WCCAs by definition are supposed to be based on votes and there should not have been any kind of 'veto' like the executive committee enacted."
Websnark blogger
Eric Burns complained that "if you're going to ask Webcartoonists to nominate who they think is the best in given categories, and then you drop their nominations because you don't agree with them ... then what exactly's the point?" In 2007, Millikin's comic was again nominated for "Outstanding Romantic Comic," but was not disqualified by the executive committee. In 2008, the executive committee went to the lengths of removing the romance comics award and all other genre award categories in an attempt to avoid further controversy. ==References==