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Rob Samsel, 1964-2011
posted June 6, 2011
 

The comics community learned via a posting by Jimmy Palmiotti to twitter that early Wizard staffer and subsequent comics retail employee Rob Samsel passed away on February 18 in a Connecticut hospital after being suddenly stricken. He was 46 years old.

Samsel is best known in comics circles for being one of the early staffers at the recently-defunct industry magazine Wizard, in the days when the magazine was organized a bit more like a traditional comics news publication with interviews and news stories than it was perhaps structured in different periods later on in its history. A part of that magazine's remarkable surge to the top of the hobby-publication heap, Samsel was an embodiment of that publication's virtues in terms of a sense of humor and maintaining deep, dependable industry connections across a variety of comics people upon which to call.

In later years he worked at a variety of Connecticut retailers and also conducted some collectible business on his own. As the comics industry catches up to the news, Samsel is remembered here and here.

He is survived by a wife of eight years, a son, Robert Jr., three step-sons and a wide variety of other relatives. He was buried on Tuesday, February 22, following a brief ceremony.