Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: art thibert, artists alley, clydene nee, colleen doran, comic con, Comics, entertainment, gofundme, jackie estrada, john layman, kaare andrews, rob liefeld, san diego, sdcc

Can We All Help Clydene Nee, The Face Of Artists Alley At San Diego Comic Con (UPDATE)

Clydene Nee is a regular volunteer staffer at San Diego Comic Con. She works at Artists Alley, hell, she  runs Artists Alley, and has been principle in standing up for the artists and the space at the show every year, when other commercial pressures have reared their head.

And she needs help.

Mark Brooks, who has set up a GoFundMe page writes,

She's a true friend of the industry and of artists in particular. She's given of herself often times thanklessly for the artists and people she loves for free and always with a smile on her face.

Brooks details her current medical issues before laying out the principle problem.

After a second surgery to graft fistulas to her body for ongoing dialysis, she placed herself on the kidney transplant list. Unfortunately her insurance deems kidney transplants as elective surgery and will only partially cover the very expensive surgery. Adding insult to injury is the 3 times a week she has to receive dialysis treatment at a whopping $3000 a pop. The wait time for a kidney transplant can be months or even years meaning she could be receiving these treatments for a while. She been forced to move to a smaller apartment closer to the hospital and maintain her job since going on any sort of disability would make the transplant unobtainable. So Clydene, through all this, is having to keep up with her day to day job just so she can have some of her treatment covered through insurance and be able to eat and keep a roof over her head. Even with all this, Clydene will have massive medical bills that she will be struggling with for a log time to come even once this hurdle is overcome. She has kept all of this private and is just now telling her friends about her situation.

Mark is asking people to help. He set a modest goal of $3000, but is obviously looking for more. Dave Elliott told Bleeding Cool,

If you have ever been an artist attending San Diego Comic-con you know Clydene Nee.  You know how important she is to not just the artists attending the show but to the life's blood of the convention and to the artistic community. To ignore that is to ignore a body part.

For 30 years she has volunteered at the show, helping up and coming creators like Jim Lee get their portfolios in front of publishers and editors. That word 'volunteer' means she doesn't get paid. The week of San Diego Comic-con where she works 14-16 hours a day, that is one of her weeks vacations from her job.

Without this woman there would be no Artists Alley at the con.

You want Artists Alley to stay? Then help us make her well!

We all owe her at least that much.  Some of us even more.

Current donors include Jimmy Palmiotti, Cully Hamner, Agnieszka Garbowska and more. It looks as if a lot of artists have a lot to thank her for. I'm going to make a donation now. Why not join me?

UPDATE: Over $4000 now, including contributions from John Layman, Colleen Doran, Kaare Andrews,  Art Thibert, Jackie Estrada, Rob Liefeld, Fletcher Chu-Fong, Barbara Kesel and many more.

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