hawkguy, part two
So, Hawkeye Hawkguy #7 ("The Storm") dropped yesterday. Those of you who requested copies: It's on its way.
In the mean time, Kelly Sue and Fraction, in response to some general, "how else can I help?" questions, set up a system for donating to the Red Cross independent of buying the comic, but making sure it's still clear it's part of that drive. If you go to the Red Cross disaster relief donation page and donate however much you want, make the donation "In Honor of 'Hawkguy & [your name].'" Take a screenshot (just of the "in honor of" section) and tweet it @kellysue and she'll post it on tumblr. She's got someone keeping track for her, and if there are 100 donations by midnight EST, two people are throwing an additional $100 into the pot, each.
For more detailed instructions, check this out.
So, if you're into Hawkguy or comics or hurricane relief, that's A Thing You Could Do.
For posterity, here's a thing I wrote about the whole thing when I posted my screencap. It's written for Tumblr, so it's a lot of stuff you guys already know:
As I'm sure most of you know by now, issue #7 of Hawkeye Hawkguy, the ongoing written by Matt Fraction, focuses on Hurricane Sandy and the effect it had on New York City and New Jersey. All of Fraction's earnings from this issue are going to Sandy relief (all of them). A few weeks ago, my friendslist and lurkers and whoever else was reading my LJ: If, for whatever reason, they wanted a copy of that issue but couldn't get it themselves, I would buy it and ship it to them.
I had three people take me up on the offer, and I've got their comics sitting here on my living room table, to be bagged, boarded, and packed up for shipping tomorrow. I also had five people comment to say that while they weren't asking for a copy, they were planning on picking one up after reading my post. So, the above donation is really in honor of those five people and my dad--I donated $3 for each of them (approximately the price of the comic) and then some extra cash for my dad. I included my dad for three reasons:
1. It was his birthday a couple weeks ago and I didn't get him anything.
2. It's because of my dad that I grew up surrounded by comic books.
3. My dad spent two long weeks without power in the aftermath of Sandy, refusing to leave the house because of looters (?)*
I live in Boston now, but I'm a Jersey Girl at heart. Boston is just where I live--New York is my city and Jersey is my home. The aftermath of Sandy was just...devastating. I know people keep saying that, but I would look at pictures and that's what I felt--devastated. And when Fraction announced that he was doing this, I immediately got a little teary because I know how hard everyone at Marvel and every where else worked in the aftermath of the storm and how hard it must have been to do so.
For two weeks, I woke up every morning to an alarm on my phone, which was plugged into the wall charging. I then took a hot shower in my lighted bathroom with the fan running, got dressed under a working overhead light, took my operational public transit to my heated, lit, internet-capable office, and worked. Around early afternoon for every day in those two weeks, I called the hospital where my mom works and talked to her for half an hour for updates on my hometown, on how my family was coping without power, on how cold it was and how frustrating it was and how annoyingly awful it was.
I mean, seriously, the number of things I was taking for granted before I even had my morning coffee.
And my parents? They got off easy. They lost power and two fridges and freezers worth of food, but they didn't get water, thank god (their basement was flooded out during a storm in Feb of 2010 and after Irene in 2011), and no one was hurt. That was not the case for many many others in New York and New Jersey and elsewhere. Every day, the rest of us were out at our jobs and our schools, living our lives, while life was standing still or limping forward for all of these people.
There wasn't anything I could do myself except look at pictures on the internet and cry and donate money. (I had a conversation with brilligspoons on the way to lunch one day about how Donors Choose sent a Sandy-centric email just to get me to stop my moratorium on charity donations. "It's not like I need the money, and they really do," I said. "Kait, you need to replace the brakes on your car," she said. "I mean, bad brakes probably won't kill me," I said.) (I did replace my brakes, don't worry, Internet moms.) It was that and call my parents during specified times when I knew they'd have access to a phone and hear them bitch about the storm and yell at them when it started to get cold. I asked my dad why he wouldn't go with my mom to stay with a relative who had power, given that it was going to dip below fucking freezing you goddamn lunatic. He said, "This is my home. I don't want to leave it."
I know, dad. It's my home too. And it really hurt to see it like that.
So, thanks friends, for commenting and inspiring me to do this, and thank you, Mr. Fraction. On behalf of every daughter who left the nest and spent two weeks googling how expensive it would be to buy a generator and ship it from Boston to Jersey, I can't tell you how much I appreciate this.
* My parents live in a nice middle class neighborhood in suburban NJ that butts up to an even nicer upper middle class neighborhood. I don't think this was a legitimate concern and I'm pretty sure he was joking, but sometimes it's hard to tell with my dad.
Also, this:
In the mean time, Kelly Sue and Fraction, in response to some general, "how else can I help?" questions, set up a system for donating to the Red Cross independent of buying the comic, but making sure it's still clear it's part of that drive. If you go to the Red Cross disaster relief donation page and donate however much you want, make the donation "In Honor of 'Hawkguy & [your name].'" Take a screenshot (just of the "in honor of" section) and tweet it @kellysue and she'll post it on tumblr. She's got someone keeping track for her, and if there are 100 donations by midnight EST, two people are throwing an additional $100 into the pot, each.
For more detailed instructions, check this out.
So, if you're into Hawkguy or comics or hurricane relief, that's A Thing You Could Do.
For posterity, here's a thing I wrote about the whole thing when I posted my screencap. It's written for Tumblr, so it's a lot of stuff you guys already know:
As I'm sure most of you know by now, issue #7 of Hawkeye Hawkguy, the ongoing written by Matt Fraction, focuses on Hurricane Sandy and the effect it had on New York City and New Jersey. All of Fraction's earnings from this issue are going to Sandy relief (all of them). A few weeks ago, my friendslist and lurkers and whoever else was reading my LJ: If, for whatever reason, they wanted a copy of that issue but couldn't get it themselves, I would buy it and ship it to them.
I had three people take me up on the offer, and I've got their comics sitting here on my living room table, to be bagged, boarded, and packed up for shipping tomorrow. I also had five people comment to say that while they weren't asking for a copy, they were planning on picking one up after reading my post. So, the above donation is really in honor of those five people and my dad--I donated $3 for each of them (approximately the price of the comic) and then some extra cash for my dad. I included my dad for three reasons:
1. It was his birthday a couple weeks ago and I didn't get him anything.
2. It's because of my dad that I grew up surrounded by comic books.
3. My dad spent two long weeks without power in the aftermath of Sandy, refusing to leave the house because of looters (?)*
I live in Boston now, but I'm a Jersey Girl at heart. Boston is just where I live--New York is my city and Jersey is my home. The aftermath of Sandy was just...devastating. I know people keep saying that, but I would look at pictures and that's what I felt--devastated. And when Fraction announced that he was doing this, I immediately got a little teary because I know how hard everyone at Marvel and every where else worked in the aftermath of the storm and how hard it must have been to do so.
For two weeks, I woke up every morning to an alarm on my phone, which was plugged into the wall charging. I then took a hot shower in my lighted bathroom with the fan running, got dressed under a working overhead light, took my operational public transit to my heated, lit, internet-capable office, and worked. Around early afternoon for every day in those two weeks, I called the hospital where my mom works and talked to her for half an hour for updates on my hometown, on how my family was coping without power, on how cold it was and how frustrating it was and how annoyingly awful it was.
I mean, seriously, the number of things I was taking for granted before I even had my morning coffee.
And my parents? They got off easy. They lost power and two fridges and freezers worth of food, but they didn't get water, thank god (their basement was flooded out during a storm in Feb of 2010 and after Irene in 2011), and no one was hurt. That was not the case for many many others in New York and New Jersey and elsewhere. Every day, the rest of us were out at our jobs and our schools, living our lives, while life was standing still or limping forward for all of these people.
There wasn't anything I could do myself except look at pictures on the internet and cry and donate money. (I had a conversation with brilligspoons on the way to lunch one day about how Donors Choose sent a Sandy-centric email just to get me to stop my moratorium on charity donations. "It's not like I need the money, and they really do," I said. "Kait, you need to replace the brakes on your car," she said. "I mean, bad brakes probably won't kill me," I said.) (I did replace my brakes, don't worry, Internet moms.) It was that and call my parents during specified times when I knew they'd have access to a phone and hear them bitch about the storm and yell at them when it started to get cold. I asked my dad why he wouldn't go with my mom to stay with a relative who had power, given that it was going to dip below fucking freezing you goddamn lunatic. He said, "This is my home. I don't want to leave it."
I know, dad. It's my home too. And it really hurt to see it like that.
So, thanks friends, for commenting and inspiring me to do this, and thank you, Mr. Fraction. On behalf of every daughter who left the nest and spent two weeks googling how expensive it would be to buy a generator and ship it from Boston to Jersey, I can't tell you how much I appreciate this.
* My parents live in a nice middle class neighborhood in suburban NJ that butts up to an even nicer upper middle class neighborhood. I don't think this was a legitimate concern and I'm pretty sure he was joking, but sometimes it's hard to tell with my dad.
Also, this: