As Harlan Ellison describes it in his introduction to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Season of Mists (1992), the announcement that Gaiman's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" had won the award for Year's Best Story at the 1991 World Fantasy Convention produced a dramatic reaction: "all those artsy-fartsy writers and artists and critics sitting there expecting a standard-print short story to win, choked on their little almond cups as this renegade funnybook guy carted off the Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Much snorting through the nose. Much umbrage taken. Many dudgeons raised to new heights." Ellison goes on to describe rules being changed so that no comic-book story could ever be considered for the award in the future. Gaiman himself is less confrontational, mildly suggesting that much of the controversy was about how giving an award only to the writer of a comics script appeared to ignore the artist's contribution to...