A few months ago the comics community lost a pillar of a man. As many of us know Ed Piskor took his own life on April first of 2024 and the original plan of our team here at Comics Illustrated was to have an entire issue dedicated to the memory of Ed. Due to timing and reasonable decisions made at C2E2 the physical magazine was ‘Old Yellered’ for the most part then and there. I have just recently discovered that some moving words were never shared in memorium of Ed Piskor and I have letters from rockstar underground cartoonists Don Simpson and Peter Bagge on Ed’s passing. Without any further withholding I am honored to present a post mortem reflection on Ed Piskor from two of my personal heroes.
Peter Bagge
It feels like I’ve known Ed for at least 25 years, but upon learning he passed away at the age of 41, that would mean he was hell, sixteen when he first wrote to me? My memory must be off! Let’s just say it’s been a long time, and aside from his youthful exuberance (something he never lost, btw), he had what I’d call an Old Soul: accomplished, wise and knowledgeable way beyond his years. A lifelong student of the art of cartooning, yet also a true scholar of comics’ history.
Ed was also a crazy jumble of what appeared to be juxtapositions. That Hip Hop wardrobe of his, for starters, which on him seemed more like a Halloween costume, considering the hyper, nerdy person that he so obviously was. He knew people ridiculed him for it too, but he didn’t care. He loved Hip Hop, so there you go (yet another topic that he was a true scholar of). He was also incredibly ambitious, but never at the expense of his many friends, whom he was always eager to promote and support.
During the week before Ed’s passing, countless people took to the internet claiming without a shred of proof that Ed was somehow a Very Bad Person. While I don’t claim to have had a window to his soul, it was blatantly obvious that his denouncers didn’t know Ed at all, and were totally talking out of their asses. Many of them used their real names while destroying his reputation as well, thus destroying their own in the process. I never had a ‘shit list’ before, but I sure do now.
If you haven’t read any of Ed Piskor’s comics before, please treat yourself and do so now. My personal favorite was his first solo project, Wizzywig, but you can’t go wrong with anything he’s done. To paraphrase Ed himself, it was all, ‘good cartooning’
Peter Bagge
Tacoma, WA
Don Simpson
Move Over, Andy:
A Remembrance of Edward R. Piskor, Jr. (1982-2024)
by Don Simpson
Andy Warhol is from Pittsburgh. A museum dedicated to him is here, along with a bridge named in his honor. His resting place, at a Byzantine Catholic cemetery in the South Hills, is an international site of pilgrimage; people who never knew Andy in life leave cans of Campbell’s soup and other pop memorabilia, poems, messages, prayers. His birthday is celebrated with bagpipes and people in white Andy wigs; Andy is almost a secular saint. A contemporary artist of my acquaintance, Madelyn Roehrig, has composed numerous documentary videos, books, and installation pieces documenting the phenomenon, referred to collectively as “Conversations with Andy.”
Well, move over, Andy. There’s a new kid in town.
It’s barely a week since his passing as I write this, but the canonization of Ed Piskor has already begun. I don’t even know where his final resting place is, but his memorial service at a funeral home in Munhall was standing room only with friends, family, and fellow cartoonists. Ed was laid out in his trademark Pirates cap and glasses, his slender, delicate fingers neatly folded over his blanket. His open casket was almost a pop-up shrine, festooned with Hip-Hop Family Tree action figures and Ed’s comics.
It reminded me so much of Andy.
Perhaps I’ve learned to look at celebrity, art, and even death through a Warholian lens because I’ve spent more than half my adult life here in Andy’s hometown. I’m sure Ed picked up a great deal from Warhol—Ed was extremely knowledgeable and smart. Both artists understood the importance of persona, of constructing an image. For Andy, it was the wig and the black turtlenecks and surrounding himself with stars like Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, and Lou Reed—as well as the imagery of stars he never met, most notably Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. For Ed, it was the Pirates cap and Public Enemy jersey and the icons of hip-hop he cartooned assiduously, like a Warhol silkscreen.
Ed was passionate about hip-hop culture, music, and fashion, certainly, but he never took himself seriously. As with Andy, the persona Ed constructed was performance art, pretend, cosplay. How else was a gawky, lanky kid supposed to compete with a handsome devil like Jim Rugg?!
It was the essence of kayfabe—make believe. Just like professional wrestling—which isn’t even wrestling at all.
Some people who never met Ed didn’t get that. They mistook the image—the fierce, urban, rustbelt white kid, the Eminem of Munhall—as something Ed thought he was or was trying to be. A gangsta rapper. But Ed never rapped, as far as I know. I don’t know if Ed could even carry a tune.
But, like Andy Warhol, Ed Piskor knew a good brand when he saw one.
They mistook the kayfabe for the real thing, too. The body slams, the folding chairs—that was all carefully rehearsed. Sometimes, mishaps happened. But the storylines, the violence, was supposed to be comic book, for entertainment. Not real.
They seemed to believe the imagery Ed conjured—on paper, on his person, on social media—was real, too. completely missing the point of Cartoonist Kayfabe.
Ed and Jim only discussed the comics they loved, with a passion and scholarly historical context unmatched even by so-called comics scholars.
Toxic fans somehow garbled that into trashing comics they never even read (I know this from firsthand experience), and finally, trashing Ed over facts not in evidence, with an omniscience they could not possibly have possessed. Certainly, that I don’t possess.
And now, Ed is gone.
Cartoonists yet unborn, who will have the chance to know Ed in life—and perhaps cosplayers, too, with their Pirate caps and Public Enemy jerseys—will only know the legend, the image, hopefully the work of Ed Piskor.
But will they be able to discern what is real and what is kayfabe? I wonder.
The Andy Warhol thing has already begun.
Those of us who knew Ed in life, who saw him before he blew up and knew it never changed him, who saw the generosity and encouragement and sheer love of comics that he dispensed to every fan and young cartoonist who came his way, have a responsibility to keep the best of Ed’s work, life, and legacy alive.
It’s not going to be easy. If they didn’t get him while he was alive, they’re even more likely to latch onto the clichés and tropes, the image rather than the substance.
I wasn’t of Ed’s generation. He was barely older than my entire career, which has been nothing as stellar as Ed’s. My earliest recollection of him is running into him at the Carnegie International in 2004, at the Robert Crumb retrospective. It wasn’t our first meeting, apparently; we had met before, as Ed reminded me. He must not have made a very big impression on me, but I was given to understand I had looked over his Image Comics samples and offered my usual boilerplate about the importance of finding one’s own voice and not cloning Rob Liefeld. Some bullshit like that.
Already, in 2004, Ed was well on his way to finding that voice; the sketchbook he showed already showed the beginnings of the more personal, alternative-underground style he would develop over the next twenty years.
What’s amazing about those two decades—aside from the fact they now seem over in a flash—is that “personal” style served him even when he tackled “mainstream” projects like X-Men: Grand Design or gaudy shock-schlock like Red Room. There was no discernable difference between Ed’s less or more “commercial” projects—Ed was always himself.
Jim Turoczy, co-owner of Eide’s Entertainment, where Ed frequently shopped, told me how Ed always rifled through the coverless comics and bought every Jack Kirby he could grab—just to give out to young artists at shows. During these sojourns, Ed reportedly expressed the desire to get back to his “crib” and draw more comics. This may be a secondhand story, but I will tell it from now on.
My last actual conversation with Ed was about keeping the lettering at the top of the panel for legibility. This was the key to the popularity of newspaper strips for decades. Ed and I both came to that conviction independently. (Not very earth-shaking, is it? An example of why reality doesn’t stand a chance against mythology.)
That was at Heroes Con, where for the past two years I was directly across the aisle from the Kayfabe tables in Indie Alley. I asked Ed why he didn’t draw sketches; he said he didn’t have time—he was too busy talking—and that was certainly true. Fans and cartoonists flocked to those tables all weekend without letup. They dropped off comics and showed Ed their sketchbooks—they sure weren’t bothering with an old-timer like me. And I’m sure Ed offered them more than boilerplate.
He was too passionate, too enthusiastic, too in love with comics for that.
The torch had been passed to a new generation, or so I thought. Which is no doubt why this tragedy has hit me all the harder. I don’t have children, but this must be what it’s like to lose a child. It’s the closest thing I’ll ever experience.
Ed was too young to be Andy Warhol, to be a myth, a legend. But there we are.
Donald E. Simpson is a cartoonist and creator of IP. He possesses a PhD in art and architectural history from the University of Pittsburgh, which he never thought would converge with comics in quite this way.Ed Piskor Tribute
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Piskor’s death was a title wave through small press publishing across the entire world. I was admittedly pretty silent on the subject having not known him personally but trust me May was a very difficult deadline and I am glad that I could find people who had spoken to him to share some words. Ed was a promoter, indy publisher and one of the biggest names in indy publishing. The world still feels heavy from his loss.