Have you read "Grand Design", Ed Piskor's remix of the X-Men's epic history? You must, even if you're not into Marvel's legendarium, because it's amazing work. Not just a more engaging distillation of the characters and their history than the movies, either. With Ed's style and wit, it's like something from a parallel world where the X-Men were alt comics. Truly uncanny!
When you’re taking 8,000 pages of material and turning it into a 240-page story, there isn’t an infinite amount of room for exposition and character stuff. So it’s Piskor style. It’s documentarian...
I come from hip hop, and in hip hop, the core of everything is sampling. I have an ego into the stratosphere, no doubt. But I also recognize that if Neal Adams draws the Sentinels flying into the sun, that is such a beautiful, mind-bending composition…how can I compete with that? Most of the comic is my doing my interpretation of things. Whenever there’s an iconic moment, it’s an iconic moment. I might pay very close homage to that. Sampling is hip hop, and I’m hip hop to my core. Just because I’m working on a different comic doesn’t mean I stop having that kind of mind.
Even if you think about the work I did in issue #1 with Magneto on the cover where he’s levitating and power is gravitating from his hand, I just scanned in a piece of wood so I could get the wood grain to look like a warped magnetic field. It’s the same thing.
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Ed Piskor, creator of Hip Hop Family Tree (which debuted right here at Boing Boing) shared with us some of the ancient artistic tools that inspires his unique technique.
While drawing a splendid Happy Mutant, he takes us through his "war chest": zip-a-tone sheets, letraset, a Leroy lettering gadget, risography, and the immortal spirit of great cartooning.
He also muses on what it's like to teach students who know every corner of a Wacom tablet, but recoil in horror when the only undo level is a splodge of white-out.
Enjoy the 35-minute visit to his studio! And keep an eye out for the Happy Mutant you see below—we'll be auctioning them for a good cause soon.
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Hip Hop Family Tree cartoonist Ed Piskor was interviewed by CBR when he was at Comicon earlier this summer. The comic started on Boing Boing as a weekly strip in 2011 and continues to run every week here.
Congratulations to Ed for winning the Eisner Award, too!
This video was shot and edited by Eric Mittleman, who produces videos for Boing Boing.
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I had a great time interviewing cartoonist Ed Piskor, creator of Hip Hop Family Tree, about his influences and interests. He's 32 years old, but his knowledge of Silver Age and underground comics runs incredibly deep.
Check out his new Hip Hop Family Tree 1975-1983 Gift Box Set. Read the rest
Ed Piskor says: "Pittsburgh magazine followed me around for a few weeks and put together a little piece on me and the Hip Hop comic. The highlight is going through my decrepit boyhood home for the first time in like 18 years and seeing artwork on the walls that survived."
I loved seeing Ed in this 8-minute film, which was produced by Dave Cole. Favorite quote: "There's not enough money in comics to listen to anybody. You should just do what the heck you wanna do." Read the rest
Here's our own cartoonist Ed Piskor being interviewed at Columbus Museum of Art by Jared Gardner on March 24, 2013. It's great to hear him talk about his influences and interests in this hour long conversation.
Ed Piskor is the recipient of the Columbus Museum of Art and Thurber House 2013 Graphic Novelist Residency. He has drawn stories for underground comics legend Harvey Pekar, and published the book Wizzywig about the history of hacking. His current comic, Hip Hop Family Tree, is serialized at Boingboing.net. The first volume of Hip Hop Family Tree will be published this year by Fantagraphics.
Jared Gardner is Professor of English and Film Studies at The Ohio State University and director of the Pop Culture Studies program. He published the book Projections: Comics and Twenty-First Century Storytelling in 2012.
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Ed Piskor is one of the most fascinating young cartoonists in America. Marc Sobel talked to him about his influences, his art, and his forthcoming book, The Hip Hop Family Tree.
[Video Link] I was thrilled to see our pal Ed "Brain Rot" Piskor in this great video about a fantastic old-school comic book store on Pennsylvania called New Dimension that actually sells used comic books!
Ed says:
Hey Mark. I'm not too sure what the comic shops look like in Cali, but
on the east coast, it seems like boxes and boxes of back issues, and
real estate costs have been clashing with stores and a lot of shops
have been relegated to selling collections, graphic novels, etc. Stuff
that fits on the bookshelf.
I have a couple really great cartoonist friends in Pittsburgh, who
brought me along to this store I've never been to, in the middle of
farm country, where this guy seems to be buying massive collections
from estates, and from shops that have gone out of business, and it
looks like he's figured out a way to make selling back issues work for
his business.
My pal Julie Sokolow thought it was worth filming and she cut a video together
of our trip there. Thought you might dig the geek fest.
I do dig it! Read the rest
In yesterday's Gweek podcast, Clive Thompson and I talked to Ed Piskor about his great new graphic Novel Wizzywig, about a young "dark side" hacker. I mentioned that I liked the scene featuring Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who make an appearance as illegal blue box salesmen dressed in their Alice in Wonderland birthday party entertainer outfits. Ed kindly gave me permission to post the excerpt here. Read the rest
Rolling Stone just announced something that we have known for a long time: Ed Piskor (our own Brain Rot cartoonist) is a hell of a talented cartoonist. I have an advance copy of his upcoming book, Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker, and it is a masterpiece.
I'm going to be interviewing Ed on Gweek when his book comes out. For now, here's the publisher's description:
They say "What You See Is What You Get"... but Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle could always see more than most people. In the world of phone phreaks, hackers, and scammers, he's a legend. His exploits are hotly debated: could he really get free long-distance calls by whistling into a pay phone? Did his video-game piracy scheme accidentally trigger the first computer virus? And did he really dodge the FBI by using their own wiretapping software against them? Is he even a real person? And if he's ever caught, what would happen to a geek like him in federal prison? Inspired by the incredible stories of real-life hackers, Wizzygig is the thrilling tale of a master manipulator - his journey from precocious child scammer to federally-wanted fugitive, and beyond. In a world transformed by social networks and data leaks, Ed Piskor's debut graphic novel reminds us how much power can rest in the hands of an audacious kid with a keyboard.
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It's my great pleasure to welcome Ed Piskor to Boing Boing, where he's launching a new comic strip, Brain Rot.
You may know Ed from his work on Wizzywig, which he recently completed. A professional cartoonist since 2005, Piskor has produced his own minicomics series and collaborated with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor and two graphic novels. You can follow him on Twitter.
Catch the first strip and bookmark the archive. Read the rest
