2002 seems a lot more than eight years ago to me, but the math (in this case) does not lie.

At the time I was the morning news anchor (as well as a producer and assignment editor) on an NPR affiliate in Albany, New York, making more money than I ever thought possible and working with some of the most amazing broadcast journalists in the business. I was also maintaining Comic Book Galaxy and it was that sidelight that resulted in an invitation from cartoonist JL Roberson to participate in an electronic comic book to benefit William Messner-Loebs, a comic book creator who had become a very early victim of the mortgage crisis that has since devoured America.

The resulting ebook, Working For The Man, boasts an amazing array of talents, from Gary Groth and Dirk Deppey to Steve Bissette and Ted Rall and many other names you will know. It also featured a weird quasi-comic I created one night while high out of my mind on vicodin, the result of an agonizing bout of bicipital tendonitis that thank whatever gods there be has never recurred to the extent that it did that long ago nightmare weekend. Eight years later I don’t think my contribution is very good, but it was an interesting lesson for me in what was possible digitally and seeing it again, it certainly reminds me of how weird and painful a weekend that was.

At any rate, turns out this week marks the 8th anniversary of the release of Working For The Man, and John Roberson has released a free PDF of the entire book, which was truly ahead of its time and still worth a peek if you’re at all interested in comic books (especially the non-superhero variety).

So click here to read Roberson’s remembrance of (and to download) Working For The Man. And thanks for having me onboard, John, it was a blast.