by 
Sprint: På Skyggesiden av Z, the Norwegian edition of La face cachée du Z (Spirou #52, by Yoann and Vehlmann), has been nominated for a 2013 SPROING Award for “Best Translated Publication” (published in 2012). The SPROING Award is the main Norwegian comics award, awarded annually by Norsk Tegneserieforum (NTF, “Norwegian Comics Forum”) since 1987 in the categories “Best Norwegian Publication” and “Best Translated Publication,” and more recently also “Best Debut” and an “Open Category.” Previous winners of the award in this category include Calvin & Hobbes (Watterson 1988), Bone (Smith 1998, 2000) and Persepolis (Satrapi 2005).
The other nominees are:
- Aya fra Yopougon (Aya) by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie (France / Ivory Coast)
- Skyttergravskrigen (It Was the War of the Trenches) by Jacques Tardi (France)
- Anyas Spøkelse (Anya’s Ghost) by Vera Brosgol (Russia / US)
- The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore (US)
Voting by members of NTF opens 19 April; no date has been set for the actual award.
(From the SPROING Award official site via Serienett, in Norwegian.)
Personally I don’t see Spirou winning this one (or even deserving to win), but who knows?
I prefered the story Alerte aux Zorkons. I liked La face cachée du Z, although it maybe became a bit too extreme in the end. I have not read any of the other nominees, so I cannot really say which is best. Still, if Spirou won, it might give the series publicity, which could convince the Norwegian editor to publish more Spirou-stories, like for instance Spirou, le journal d’un ingénu by Emile Bravo. It seems like they more or less automatically publish stories from the main series, while they are much more sceptical to the one-shots. Most of the one-shots are in my opinion far more interesting than the stories by Morvan and Munuera.
The prize has now been awarded, and the winner was It Was the War of the Trenches by Tardi.