For those of us who have been working in the comic-strip business for the past several years, there has been no truer friend in journalism than David Astor. (That's him, second from the left, in the photo above. Sitting right next to Johnny Eyebrows.) As the editor in charge of covering syndicated content for Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine for the newspaper industry, his column and blog updates reached a significant number of print media decision-makers.And his support of webcomics has been second to none. It was evident when he and I shared a panel at NYCC in 2008. He could always be counted on to help spread the word about anything from the launch of a new comic to a new book to a webcomics charity event to aid the victims of a disaster.
At the beginning of the year, Astor was laid off from his position at E&P. Not only does this mean that the coverage of comics in general at the mag has dropped precipitously, but it means that our friend found himself in a particularly tough situation.
Luckily, Astor can do a whole lot more than cover comics. He's an extremely skillful humor columnist, and the Huffington Post, clearly eager to take advantage of the talent that the E&P tossed aside, has added him to its roster.
So go and reacquaint yourself with an old friend to the webcomics community... and enjoy some very insightful humor along the way. You'll want to hit that RSS feed and add it to your bookmarks. He really is just that good.