It's a sad day for the once proud and honorable world wide web.

In the biggest election scandal since Watergate, members of the Valiant Fan Forums have been caught tampering with votes in Reddit's /r/comicbooks' "Best of Comics 2015" polls. The news comes via /r/comicbooks mod Christian Hoffer, who tweeted:

While Hoffer's tweet seems to support the vote rigging and subsequent reaction, calling it "the BEST," Outhouse sources can confirm that Hoffer, a master of sarcasm who used to be Editor in Chief of The Outhouse itself, is actually displeased by the events. Hoffer posted the following message to the awards thread on Reddit:

So good news and bad news. We finally had our first case of vote manipulation! After noticing that two categories (Best Inker and Best Publisher) had a disproportionately higher amount of votes than other categories, I did some digging and discovered that a Valiant fan forum rigged the vote had manipulated those categories for a Valiant win. Luckily, SurveyMonkey's advanced statistics tipped me off to this rigging, so I was actually able to figure out where/how the votes had been manipulated. Both awards have been vacated this year due to the vote manipulation, so there's no winner. Apologies and I'll try to figure out how to prevent this next year.

Here is an example of the vote brigading, where a forum user identifying himself only as Bruce Hartshorn, though we cannot confirm that is his or her real name, posted:

After Hoffer disqualified the offending categories, Valiant Fan Forum members began to complain, with one reputable user going by the name Dirtbag Sailor (again, we cannot confirm whether or not this is his or her real name) posting:

According to latest reports (I.E. viewing the Valiant Fan Forums), The Outhouse can exclusively confirm that the brigadiers are also attempting to influence The Beat's Comics Industry Person of the Year award.

The Outhouse is saddened that the integrity of these awards have been sullied by this despicable controversy, and we hope that /r/comicbooks learn from their mistakes and simply hand out their awards to the person or company willing to give them the largest amount of money, like The Outhouse does.

In related news, if the Valiant Fan Forums would like The Outhouse to award Valiant wins in next year's Best of Comics, we invite them to paypal us money directly as soon as possible.

At press time, Hoffer had some strong words for the members of the Valiant Fan Forums participating in the vote rigging:

We'll keep you updated.