Wizzywig 3: "Fugitive" — hacker history comic turns up the heat

Cory Doctorow 8:59 am Mon Feb 1, 2010

Over the weekend, I had the extremely pleasurable experience of reading the third volume of Ed Piskor's kick-ass hacker-history comic WIZZYWIG, entitled "Fugitive." Piskor's series tells the fictional story of Kevin "Boingthumb" Phenicle, a hacker kid who becomes the center of a nationwide manhunt after a hysterical press and a crackdown on hackers brands him the most dangerous man in America.

In "Fugitive," Kevin goes underground, and Piskor does a wonderful job of fictionalizing the techniques used by fugitives to forge and maintain secret identities, as well as the difficulties they face in maintaining their cover while running from the law.

Piskor really keeps the heat up in this volume, pulling off a gripping story with lots of good, meaty forbidden knowledge and insight into the hacker mindset. Ed publishes and sells the series himself, and the first two volumes are also online as free PDFs. They're well-made books, and cracking good reads, a fictionalized rendition of Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown crossed with Steven Levy's Hackers.

WIZZYWIG VOLUME 3: FUGITIVE

(Thanks to Ed Piskor for sending me a review copy of "Fugitive"!)

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