Pledging for Rusty

This past Sunday Free Lunch Comics held a benefit for our mutual friend Rusty Haller. Rusty is an extraordinarily talented CT cartoonist who has fallen on some hard times (his mom with whom he lived, passed away, his health began deteriorating, and he was forced to move out of his apartment). Well, a bunch of us got together at the Free Lunch studios in Granby CT, and held a benefit auction to raise money to help Rusty.

About 50 people showed up at the auction and we managed to raise some $1,300.00 for Rusty. Another $800.00 was raise by Bryanna Bunny, who set up a donation fund to aid Rusty. (you can still go to the Bryanna Bunny site and donate funds if you wish to contribute to the cause).

Steve Kanaras from Free Lunch has gone on to indicate that the possibility of setting up an ebay auction site to help raise money for Rusty (I hear talk of a Chris Torres painting as being one item, as well as some comics and other items — I’ll keep you posted in this regard).

Anyway, I’m glad to say that — for the moment at least — Rusty has found lodging with a friend in Ohio,and we all wish him well. He is also back at work, drawing, addressing his health issues, and believing that he will come out of this adversity better and stronger.

Our hope and prayers are with him.

Rusty Haller

So I have this professional friend...or rather this friend who is a fellow professional. He is a cartoonist, and well, has been having a bit of personal and professional bad luck. In this tough economy he is having some difficulty getting a stead stream of assignments and, is getting evicted. He has to move out of his place at the end of the month (which as you all know is two days from now).

I’ve been doing what I can to get Rusty hooked up with more work, or representation of some sort (even commissioned and purchased art from him recently). I’ve also been trying to get other friends of ours to help in in whatever way they could. Sever folks have risen to the challenge (including the folks at Bryanna Bunny, who have set up a donation fund for Rusty, and the guys over at Free Lunch Comics who are holding a charity auction to help raise money for Rusty).

Rust was doing a bunch of great work in the ‘80s and ‘90s for Marvel, Dc, Archie, and other companies. He is also the creator of Ace & Queenie, a very cool action/adventure anthropomorphic espionage series, that began live over at Radio Comix and lives now on the Web.

In the mean time, take a look at a very cool comic that Rusty recently drew (I'm trying to see if I can find a magazine that will purchase it — so if you know of any editor that want's to get his or her hands on a very talented cartoonist, let me know).