Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Please Help John Ostrander


Back in 1998, I worked on a comic book called Quicksilver, for Marvel Comics. One of the writers on the book was a man named John Ostrander. John is a fantastic guy, and always treated me with respect. He's a terribly nice man, and deserves nothing but the best. Unfortunately, he's now going through some difficult times. John has glaucoma, which is an awful eye disease. My own grandfather had it, and as a result of it (and a few other complications) lost his eyesight. He was fortunate to regain it in one of his eyes, but the damage was permanent in his left eye (incidentally, this was the same grandfather who died of melanoma, the same disease my wife has. Sad coincidence).

In order to save John's eyesight, something that is necessary for him to maintain and continue his career as a comic book writer, he will need an operation. John's insurance will only cover a small percentage of the cost of the operation, so some of his industry friends are trying to raise money to help defray the cost. My family are no strangers to the high cost of medical bills, and we've received a lot of help from people and organizations within the industry. It's only right for me to try to help someone else in difficult circumstances too. To that end, I'm going to be donating some of my original art to try to help the cause. I'd like to ask anyone reading this to give a little something too, if possible. I'm sure any donation would help. For more information, you can click here. Heidi MacDonald also linked to this, but I thought you might like to see the comments section on her post on The Beat, to see what other industry people have to say about John.

So many of you have been so generous to us. I hope you'll do the same for John Ostrander. Thanks.

Best,
Rich

1 comment:

ChrisCross said...

Hey, Rich... what happened on this? How's John doing?