… is PvP by Scott Kurtz. The webcomic beat out several worthy contenders, including:

• HARK! A VAGRANT, by Kate Beaton — a Webcomic Overlook favorite; when’s someone finally going to hand her an award, people?
• HIGH MOON, by Steve Ellis, David Gallaher and Scott O. Brown — which is also good, but won the award last year.
• POWER OUT, by Nathan Schreiber — reviewed here, and, along with Sin Titulo, was also an Eisner nominee.
• SIN TITULO, by Cameron Stewart — which would probably have been my favorite to win the thing based on Cameron Stewart’s name alone. Good thing I don’t keep track of the Harveys, huh? I would’ve looked pretty silly.

The awards, which coincidentally were also being emceed by Scott Kurtz, were presented at the Baltimore Comic-Con. Kurtz joins a very short list of Online Comic winners, which include James Kochalka (American Elf), two-time winner Nicolas Gurewitch (Perry Bible Fellowship), and the High Moon guys.

As for the other webcomic-related nominations, the Act-I-Vate Primer was up for Best Anthology, but lost out to DC’s Wednesday Comics. A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge lost the Best Previously Published Graphic Novel Award to Image Comic’s Mice Templar. Jenny Frison of The Dreamer, which has been nominated at the Harveys before, was up for Best Cover Artist, but lost to Hellboy (but, let’s face it, it’s hard to beat Mike Mignola). Steve Ellis was in the running for Best Inker for High Moon, but came runner up to Klaus Janson (The Amazing Spider-Man). Finally, Rob Guillory took home the Best New Talent award for Chew, which meant that Nathan Schieber of Power Out had to settle for the “Nominated for Best New Talent” title.

All in all, not a bad year for webcomic recognition at the Harveys. Still, if the nominations handed out this year and last year are any indication, there’s a movement toward something we can now call established brands: several multiple nominations for Zuda Comics, Act-I-Vate, and Transmission-X. Transmission-X has now established itself as a formidable brand with the Shuster and Eisner Awards going to Sin Titulo.

Despite the High Moon win last year, the Harveys seem to be leaning toward gag-a-day strips while the Eisner seems to be favoring long-form webcomics. It might be some time before either award recognizes short-form and long-form as two fundamentally different genres, but at least we seem to have a clear division regarding the nature of the awards themselves.

(h/t Robot 6)