Nine things that occurred to me while looking over the 2010 Eisner Award Nominations:

• It's nice to see manga so fully integrated into categories that aren't Best U.S. Edition of International Material-Japan/Asia: Best Continuing Series, Best Limited Series, Best Reality-Based Work, etc. That said, I feel a little sorry for anyone going up against Naoki Urasawa (20th Century Boys, Pluto).

• I've already turned to Google and Amazon to look up a handful of works I'd never heard of.

• Those noises you hear? Heads exploding after seeing James Robinson's Best Writer nomination for the widely reviled (online, at least) Justice League: Cry for Justice, followed by the clickety-clack of smoking keyboards.

• I like the genre diversity represented in several of the categories. For instance, Best Continuing Series features one superhero comic, one science fiction, one horror and two contemporary fantasy.

• I'm not sure I understand the thinking behind splitting Best Writer/Artist into two categories.

• The nominees for Best Humor Publication strike me as exceptionally strong. Seriously, books by Tony Millionaire, Peter Bagge, Roger Langridge, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and John Stanley and Irving Tripp? Place your bets now.

• Four of the five nominees for Best Publication for Kids come from publishing houses. The odd title out is Marvel's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

• This is the second year in a row that 15-time Best Letterer winner Todd Klein has been absent from the nominations.

• After a six-year winning streak, this is the first time since 2002 that James Jean hasn't been nominated for Best Cover Artist (he's stepped away from comics). The five nominees are stellar, though: John Cassaday, Salvador Larocca, Sean Phillips, Alex Ross and J.H. Williams III. (My money's on Williams for Detective Comics.)