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Sorry for the recent radio silence. As you no doubt have already noticed, the great Cage Match topic vote ended a while back, and it was a neck-and-neck race all the way to the end. In a surprise photo finish, Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid ended up beating Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis by two votes.

For posterity, here’s the final tally:

All Star Batman and Robin: 9 votes (6%)
Army@Love: 7 (4%)
Bête Noire: 8 (5%)
Gilbert Hernandez’s more mainstream work (Grip, Girl Crazy): 5 (3%)
Heavy Liquid: 41 (28%)
Late-period Kirby (Captain Victory, Silver Star): 9 (6%)
Marvel Zombies 2: 6 (4%)
Middle-late period Kirby (Kamandi, The Eternals): 17 (11%)
Persepolis: 39 (26%)
Ultra Gash Inferno: 5 (3%)

146 votes were cast in all.

Next time around, we probably won’t include quite so many books on the ballot, as it appears that so many choices may have split the votes to an unhealthy degree. But a lot of the also-rans will probably return in future polls.

As soon as we all read (or re-read) the book, we’ll get the Cage Match started. (I’ve been turning my apartment inside out for the past week looking for my copy, and have so far been unable to find it. This will surprise anyone who’s ever seen the meticulous state in which the Hodler/Weinstein household keeps its comics organized.)

So thanks for your patience and stay tuned. And thanks to all of you who voted.

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Today’s your last day to cast or change your vote in the Cage Match poll over in the sidebar, so if you haven’t done it yet, now’s the time. The race is pretty incredibly tight — Persepolis and Heavy Liquid have been running neck and neck all week — but it’s still not impossible for any of the books to win, if enough people organized or something. (I doubt that will happen, but I kind of like imagining that people care enough about this to canvas for votes.) In any case, this is the last chance for those of you who haven’t voted yet to make your voice heard.

Also, in a daring move that you may not have noticed because it was buried in the comments, Frank (CC‘s resident fashion director) has proposed special Cage Match-related headgear. You won’t be able to see us, but during the competition, we’ll all be wearing masks:

We encourage you to locate a Comics Comics t-shirt and a pair of scissors.

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Thanks to everyone who submitted nominations for our next Cage Match debate topic. (If you aren’t familiar with the concept, check out the first one here.) Over the weekend, we whittled your suggestions down to ten possibilities, and have now put a poll up in the sidebar. Please vote for your favorite argument-starter.

Don’t be too devastated if your horse doesn’t win, by the way; these are all good choices, and if we keep doing Cage Matches, many of these (as well as some nominations that didn’t quite make it this time around) will more than likely return for later rounds.

Sorry for the dragged-out, too-many-early-primaries nature of this process. We’re still experimenting, but next time around this will be a streamlined super-train.