I am as angry as I have ever been.
Saturday morning I was saddened to learn that Michael Turner died. He was a nice guy, a great artist and someone I would speak to at the different cons. I spent the weekend feeling sad not only for his family and friends, but for his fans as well. When I heard the news, I text messaged a close friend of mine about it, a friend, who like Michael, also has cancer and is around the same age. I then thought about another friend and artist Joshua Medors who is currently fighting cancer. I went to Dark Delicacies in Burbank on Sunday where they were raising money for a friend of the store who has brain cancer. And by Sunday night, I was just feeling overwhelmed.
Today though, today I am pissed off. I looked down at my phone, a pocket sized computer that can do everything except cook waffles and I wondered, do we really needs this? Is it more important to beam hi-definition television channels into every household than it is to cure bone cancer? Is changing the face of the Middle East a more valiant fight than stopping ovarian cancer? Is brain cancer not glamorous enough to focus on so they spent the money on the hybrid car? We're complaining about paying $5 a gallon for gas, but I bet every family member of a cancer sufferer would pay a hundred times that if it would heal their loved one.
Cancer isn't new. Its not like we woke up one day last year and suddenly we had a new disease. The first documented case of cancer can be tracked back 1500 BC in Egypt, recorded on papyrus. So we've had a little time here. What exactly are the pharmaceutical companies doing? They can help us re-grow hair, stay erect and stop sneezing while standing in a pollen storm, but when it comes to stopping the big C they're striking out. Oh wait, I forget that the pharmaceutical companies don't actually want to cure anything, they just want to control the symptoms with you guessed it medication.
This is an election year and we have the big debate over the old Republican and the new Democrat. That's a load of crap. We have to choose between the same and more of the same. So a note to the candidates, you want me to come vote for you, try talking about real change and then follow through. I don't care what race, religion or party you are, tell me that you are going to bring the troops home from the cluster of a war and take the money we are wasting and spend it first on the health of the troops that fought this war, then the rest is going to a war on cancer tell me that, promise me that with an automatic impeachment policy if not enacted within one year then I will not only vote for you, I will drive around my neighborhood picking up anyone who needs a ride to the voting booth. Tell me we'll stop having a hydrogen reserve incase we need dirigibles so we can use that money to fund medical research. Tell me we'll stop paying politicians insanely high salaries, cut them in half and give that money to the American Cancer Society.
Where the hell is the focus of this country? Who cares if our basketball team brings home a gold medal? You want the world to notice, stamp out lung cancer and see which impresses the other countries more. As a country we need to get our heads out of our collective ass and set priorities that mean something. The selfish nature that rolls across our nation like a choking smog needs to stop now. 37 is too young to die! 35 is too young to even think about dying! I am tired of burying my friends because we are a nation of self-absorbed morons who only care about the things that affect them. What has to happen to open peoples' eyes? Do kids have to start getting cancer from playing guitar hero before we start making it the priority it needs to be to actually find a cure?
Yeah, I'm damn angry and feel completely helpless because I can only rattle my cup against a handful of bars. There is only so far my voice can be heard before it just becomes 'that silly comic writer in California'. But I want other people to get angry, because anger seems to be the only way we can get anything done. 9/11 pissed us off and we went to war with the biggest guns we could find. Well its time to get pissed at cancer and dust off the big guns again. Look around you, look at all the technological advances at your fingertips, advances that will be outdated in a year. Now look out your window at the people walking by how many of them will be dead a year from now? How many of those could be prevented if we just had the right priorities. If we just got mad and went after the disease like anything else that threatens this country.
I'm just a comic book writer that most of you probably never heard of and you may never see anything I write. But I'm not someone who just talks about it. I put together a graphic novel two years ago and gave the entire book to a charity organization called The Hero Initiative to help them raise money. I do whatever I can to help the causes I think are worth fighting for. Cancer is a disease that needs to be eliminated in all its forms. I don't have another graphic novel to give away, but I can make an offer to Marvel, DC or Dark Horse since you are the guys that pay the best, you get the offer if one of you wants to give me a title, I will write it for a year and you can give every penny of my salary to the American Cancer Society. Cause I am angry as hell and all I have to fight with are my words but I will use every single one of them if it will stop just one person from being buried far too young.
Dan Wickline
7/1/2008
If you feel compelled to repost this, please do so with my blessing. The more people that read this, the more anger we might build.
Saturday morning I was saddened to learn that Michael Turner died. He was a nice guy, a great artist and someone I would speak to at the different cons. I spent the weekend feeling sad not only for his family and friends, but for his fans as well. When I heard the news, I text messaged a close friend of mine about it, a friend, who like Michael, also has cancer and is around the same age. I then thought about another friend and artist Joshua Medors who is currently fighting cancer. I went to Dark Delicacies in Burbank on Sunday where they were raising money for a friend of the store who has brain cancer. And by Sunday night, I was just feeling overwhelmed.
Today though, today I am pissed off. I looked down at my phone, a pocket sized computer that can do everything except cook waffles and I wondered, do we really needs this? Is it more important to beam hi-definition television channels into every household than it is to cure bone cancer? Is changing the face of the Middle East a more valiant fight than stopping ovarian cancer? Is brain cancer not glamorous enough to focus on so they spent the money on the hybrid car? We're complaining about paying $5 a gallon for gas, but I bet every family member of a cancer sufferer would pay a hundred times that if it would heal their loved one.
Cancer isn't new. Its not like we woke up one day last year and suddenly we had a new disease. The first documented case of cancer can be tracked back 1500 BC in Egypt, recorded on papyrus. So we've had a little time here. What exactly are the pharmaceutical companies doing? They can help us re-grow hair, stay erect and stop sneezing while standing in a pollen storm, but when it comes to stopping the big C they're striking out. Oh wait, I forget that the pharmaceutical companies don't actually want to cure anything, they just want to control the symptoms with you guessed it medication.
This is an election year and we have the big debate over the old Republican and the new Democrat. That's a load of crap. We have to choose between the same and more of the same. So a note to the candidates, you want me to come vote for you, try talking about real change and then follow through. I don't care what race, religion or party you are, tell me that you are going to bring the troops home from the cluster of a war and take the money we are wasting and spend it first on the health of the troops that fought this war, then the rest is going to a war on cancer tell me that, promise me that with an automatic impeachment policy if not enacted within one year then I will not only vote for you, I will drive around my neighborhood picking up anyone who needs a ride to the voting booth. Tell me we'll stop having a hydrogen reserve incase we need dirigibles so we can use that money to fund medical research. Tell me we'll stop paying politicians insanely high salaries, cut them in half and give that money to the American Cancer Society.
Where the hell is the focus of this country? Who cares if our basketball team brings home a gold medal? You want the world to notice, stamp out lung cancer and see which impresses the other countries more. As a country we need to get our heads out of our collective ass and set priorities that mean something. The selfish nature that rolls across our nation like a choking smog needs to stop now. 37 is too young to die! 35 is too young to even think about dying! I am tired of burying my friends because we are a nation of self-absorbed morons who only care about the things that affect them. What has to happen to open peoples' eyes? Do kids have to start getting cancer from playing guitar hero before we start making it the priority it needs to be to actually find a cure?
Yeah, I'm damn angry and feel completely helpless because I can only rattle my cup against a handful of bars. There is only so far my voice can be heard before it just becomes 'that silly comic writer in California'. But I want other people to get angry, because anger seems to be the only way we can get anything done. 9/11 pissed us off and we went to war with the biggest guns we could find. Well its time to get pissed at cancer and dust off the big guns again. Look around you, look at all the technological advances at your fingertips, advances that will be outdated in a year. Now look out your window at the people walking by how many of them will be dead a year from now? How many of those could be prevented if we just had the right priorities. If we just got mad and went after the disease like anything else that threatens this country.
I'm just a comic book writer that most of you probably never heard of and you may never see anything I write. But I'm not someone who just talks about it. I put together a graphic novel two years ago and gave the entire book to a charity organization called The Hero Initiative to help them raise money. I do whatever I can to help the causes I think are worth fighting for. Cancer is a disease that needs to be eliminated in all its forms. I don't have another graphic novel to give away, but I can make an offer to Marvel, DC or Dark Horse since you are the guys that pay the best, you get the offer if one of you wants to give me a title, I will write it for a year and you can give every penny of my salary to the American Cancer Society. Cause I am angry as hell and all I have to fight with are my words but I will use every single one of them if it will stop just one person from being buried far too young.
Dan Wickline
7/1/2008
If you feel compelled to repost this, please do so with my blessing. The more people that read this, the more anger we might build.
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