My Number One Favorite Moment In My Career

The lovely and wonderful EALPERIN asked me what moment I was most proud of in my life/work/career, and I covered all of them except my number one moment, which I'm posting here.

This is a big one for me. I've been involved or tried to spearhead lots of emergency fundraisers for comics professionals in a desperate situations…home fires in the cases of Lea Hernandez and Karen Ellis, things of that nature. The generosity of the comics community always amazes me.

A few years back, one of the great writers, John Ostrander, developed glaucoma in his eyes so bad that he was in danger not just of losing his vision, but the actual eyes in his head. He has insurance, but it wasn't enough to cover the treatments. Worse, he couldn't work while recuperating. Couldn't afford the hotel stays necessary.  Just an awful situation.

I found out about it from Mike Gold, a great man and creator himself, who, along with a couple other great folks, was doing a fundraiser to pay for John's hideously expensive surgery. It was going okay, but not amazingly well.

I haven't really talked about this in detail. But it just made me really unhappy to think of, it just seemed so unfair.

So I started writing letters, dozens and dozens of letters to everyone I knew in comics. I don't know anything about organizing a charity (so thank GOD Mike and Adriane were there to do all that), but I know how to be a pest. And I was an excellent pest, it turns out.  People, GREAT people, big names, started donating art, and toys. Retailers put out a collection jar. Word spread.

But still, too slow. I had a secret weapon.

Comicon was coming up.

I had a plan to go bother every pro I could find to get them to donate art, scripts, whatever they could.  I would be RELENTLESS.

That was my plan. Then I got sick the day before the con. My husband tried to get me to cancel, but I just couldn't take that idea. I should have gone to the hospital, that was pretty stupid.

Anyway, I started asking artists for original art at the con for this fundraiser. At first, donations were a little bit slow. We got things like sketch cards, nothing that would raise any real money. I started to get very worried. Comic artists get hassled for donations all the time, and at MOST we had raised only a few hundred dollars.

We were hassling people the entire convention, I was sick, I had a busy schedule of my own, so I also enlisted my son and husband and sent THEM out to do scouting and follow-ups.

Eventually, we started getting some pieces that would really count, and I will never forget them. I went to Neal Adams, who was very skeptical, but once people vouched for me, he gave us an amazing Captain America piece, and he said, "Listen, if anyone stiffs you, you tell them NEAL ADAMS told them to get off their ass and donate a piece"  HA!

Then Francis Manapul donated a GORGEOUS Wonder Woman cover…that was the first real big money piece, and I was just beside myself, I was trying to make sure he really wanted to donate such an expensive piece (artists make a lot of their income from selling those big money covers!), and he insisted he did. LOVE YOU FRANCIS.

We learned a couple tricks right away…we got a huge portfolio with clear sleeves in it, and we put all the BIG pieces, the covers, the double page spreads, the huge name artists, right up front. We showed that to EVERYBODY.

It worked beautifully. I'm embarrassed to say it's manipulative, but nobody wanted to donate a little sketch card when the first page in our book was a huge full color cover by Stephane Roux, or a full color Usagi Yojimbo (those are rare as hell), by the great Stan Sakai, or a huge Groo color piece by Sergio Argones, or a color Batman by Matt Wagner. Joe Quesada donated a piece.  Mike and Adriane got a once-in-a-lifetime Miracleman statue prototype signed just for this by Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, for Pete's sake.

I'll never forget those three days. We were warned that some artists would say, "come back later" and wouldn't actually donate anything. That NEVER happened. EVERY SINGLE ARTIST who told us to come back donated, kept their word and better. I can't explain what it was like holding a portfolio with art by the biggest names in comics, all given without a thought of being thanked, just to do a good thing for a great writer.

It was incredibly moving. Steve Lieber not only donated, he got all  the others in his Periscope Studios to donate. Stephane Roux hassled artists to get them to help. Patton Oswalt donated cash and called his standup comic friends to donate. Kevin Smith donated a big chunk. The great Bill Morrison got Simspons sketches from MATT GROENING, and donated classic art from his own collection. Retailers donated books…it just went on and on and on.  I cried a few times, people said such wonderful things about John. His kindness and decency and talent came back when he needed it…several people had worked with him and he had fought for them, and they remembered and were thrilled to pay him back.

I mentioned the auction on a panel and a bunch of readers wanted to donate on the spot. Jim Lee promised to do a piece, and sat at a table at the con to finish it, Wolverine and Batman, while the guards were pushing us out the door, literally, the last minute of the last day, to keep his word to me and to John.Terry Moore donated an Echo cover. Jeff Smith, Bernard Chang, Jill Thompson, David Lloyd, the entire Kubert art family, Paul Chadwick, Jamal Igle,  Tim Truman, Norm Breyfogle, Terry Dodson, Aaron Lopresti, Nicola Scott, Gene Ha, the Supergirl Adventures team, Eric Canete, the Tiny Titans guys…they all donated and many many more.

When the con was over, I actually just sort of collapsed…I cried again, partly from exhaustion. The con is already a non-stop thing, from morning til night. Adding on running the length of the con hall dozens of times on top of being sick, I just absolutely collapsed.  But we had a huge portfolio of art that still makes my heart well up.  I cataloged it all, and when we handed it over to the wonderful Adriane, who was responsible for the online auctions, we were handing over what might well have been one of the most amazing single portfolios in the history of the medium.

It hurt to LOOK at it, it was so amazing.I was absolutely terrified walking to my hotel, that something might happen to it.

This is a long story, but it was a very joyous experience.

I got better, we were all reminded of how wonderful people can be when called upon.

The upside is, the auctions and donations raised about 40,000 dollars. They were not only able to get John the surgery to save his sight, but also get him expense money for his recuperation, and a laptop computer so that he could continue to work. One of the best bits of news of the whole thing was that John got some new gigs out of the thing, and he and I got to even work together on a Secret Six/Suicide Squad crossover, like a dream come true for me.

John being who he is, he was very reluctant to ask for help, and he agreed to do it on one condition, that any money beyond what he needed would go straight to the Hero Initiative, which it did.

It's easy to get discouraged and down about things in the industry sometimes, especially if you spend as much time on message boards as I have where that does seem to be the focus sometimes. But a great talent needed some help and the story is that dozens and dozens of the busiest, most talented people I've ever met lent a hand without question and did a wonderful, wonderful thing.

THAT is my proudest moment in comics.