John Wilcock (1927 – 2018) was an underground publishing legend who co-founded The Village Voice in 1955 and was at the center of the counterculture movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Over the years, Boing Boing has been proud to run John Wilcock: New York Years, a biographical comic strip series by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall. Now you can get a beautiful print edition by helping fund the project on Kickstarter. I kicked in for the complete two-book set as soon as I learned about it.
From Kickstarter:
This is the story of John Wilcock, a person unfamiliar to most people today, but significant enough in his time, contributing to the Cultural American Revolution of the 1960s/1970s, to earn kind obituaries from both The New York Times and The Guardian.
John died in 2018, and this comic book project on his life was the last project he worked on; he was a five year interview subject, helping to assemble and compile as much of a timeline of his amazing (and quietly effective) life. We had access to many amazing documents and then spent even more time connecting the dots on other events. The end result is a lavishly drawn memoir, including mountains of anecdotes and stories. It's unlike any other biography comic you've ever read.
Even if you don't recognize John's name, you know him by his accomplishments:
1) He co-founded The Village Voice in 1955, helping establish a template for countless cities across the world to make their own community newspapers.
2) He also co-founded Inter/View with Andy Warhol, and was the "resident reporter" of the Andy Warhol Factory itself, later writing the first major assessment of Andy Warhol's career, the playfully titled "Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol".