A panel of respected judges selected Circle Versus Square by Michael Wakcher to be the winner of the 2008 Webcomic Readers Choice Awards in Writing. Circle Versus Square finished third across the categories of Best Antagonist for the character Pentagon, Best Supporting Character for the character Rectangle, and Best New Comic.
Circle Versus Square faced strong competition in the writing category including xkcd, Questionable Content, Yu + ME: Dream, and SuperFogeys. Circle Versus Square is only a first year comic while xkcd and Questionable content have been producing comics for 3 years and 4 years respectively.
A total of 139 nominations were made in seven categories were voted upon. Thousands of votes were received and tabulated before the judges made their assessments. Interestingly, a number of award winners were not the top vote getters as the judges in several categories bucked the popular sentiment. Circle Versus Square finished first in the popular vote in Writing, Antagonist, and New Comic.
It held a commanding popular vote lead in the New Comic category, leading the category by a margin of more than 31% of the total vote over its closest competitor. In the end, the decisive popular vote was insufficient to sway the judges’ panel.
Reflecting on the contest Michael Wakcher said, “Phil (Hofer) has a wonderful awards and I look forward to it continuing. It does a truly fantastic job exposing new comics to readers and creators a like.”
He continued, “I am thankful to my fans and friends for voting. We did very well in the end and I believe the awards were decided very fairly. Everyone deserves the position and success they achieved.”
Wakcher concluded in the form of one of his classic witticisms from Wakcher.com, “The sweetness of victory is undermined only by its lack of nutritional content.”
