Myfanwy Nixon sent the following in for you all to see which carries a link to one of the most ill-informed pieces of journalism I've ever Observed. And we wonder why sequential art is so poorly understood in this country...

This might be one for the Cartoon County blog.
As you may have seen this weekend, the Observer announced the winners of its competition in conjunction with Random House, Jonathan Cape and Comica.
There's been a bit of disgruntlement in the world of online comics creators, not at the judges' choices, but at this ill-informed article http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/observer_books.html
The Guardian website also failed to put up copies of the winning entrants until 24 hours later, so sadly there is little discussion of the winners' work; it's more an abstract debate about the Observer's coverage of comics (and their seeming belief that the words 'comic' and 'manga' are synonymous).

But! After chatting online with a few of those who did not win, I decided to put together links to as many of their strips as I could find online. You can see the result here: http://www.drawanyway.com/2007/10/16/cartoons-the-observercape-winners-and-some-worthy-entrants/.
So far I have only 14 of the rumoured 300 entrants, but I will go on adding links as I find them (plus – that's 14 juicy comic strips waiting for you to read). If anyone else entered, and you want a wider audience for your work, drop me a line in the comments box below that entry and I will be happy to add a link. There is also a Flickr group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/551664@N23/.

As I mention in my post, one unexpected side effect of this is that cartoon artists from all over the UK are getting together and looking at each others' work, which is just great. A few years ago, we all would have entered the competition, heard nothing back, and retreated into our shells. Not any more – viva l'Internet!