Writing on Ed and Life

It feels like I've written about 10,000 words since the passing of Edward R. Piskor, Jr. (1982-2024) on April 1, and it's only April 12, less than two weeks. I've been gratified to hear from several people, both friends and strangers, who have found some comfort in those words. Of course, I've been writing for completely selfish reasons, to process my own feelings about the tragedy.

I made one blog post and numerous posts on Facebook; I've composed a remembrance for The Comics Journal and another for another print-online comics publication. They are somewhat repetitious and overlap; at some point, I will gather them all here if only so they can be located all in one place for the record, in case I am misquoted or distorted (which seems highly likely in the present toxic environment).

I didn't know Ed all that well, but I can honestly say I knew him before he broke into comics. In the 1990s, after my Image Comics fame (short-lived as it was), I conducted cartooning workshops around Pittsburgh for many years. Ed was never a student of mine, but I must have seen him at a small convention or bookstore appearance in the late 90s; I vaguely recall he was trying to break into Image with a neo-Leifeldian style.

 

Ed, me, and Gary Groth at PIX - The Pittsburgh Indy Comix Expo in 2012.

The second time I ran into Ed I distinctly remember: that was at the 2004 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art here in Pittsburgh, which mounted a major Robert Crumb retrospective. Ed showed me his sketchbook, which seemed ever-presented; he had already developed his own unique underground-alternative style that would serve him on Wizzywig, Hip-Hop Family Tree, X-Men: Grand Design, and Red Room. He said I had offered some generic advice and encouragement about the importance on finding one's own voice, and he thanked me, although I can't take any credit whatsoever for his subsequent success.

The industry and passion that fueled Ed's drive to make a career of comics, when it seemed to me the most impossible, was absolutely astonishing. Not only did he survive but thrive. He packed an incredible career into just two decades, which now seem to have gone by with a flash.

In recent years, my table next to Michel Fiffe was right across the aisle from the Kayfabe tables at Heroes Con in Charlotte in 2022 and 2023, and I happened to be right behind them in a small four-table island next to Jill Thompson in 2022 at Baltimore (I could hear Ed and Jim's voices through the curtain all weekend). At both shows, they unloaded their own stuff, did their own setup, no entourage or roadies, and were on their feet all weekend, talking to fans and aspiring cartoonists. They were the ones now dispensing advice to hopefuls wanting to break into comics, not me.

I asked Ed why he didn't do commission or sketches; he said he was too busy talking up comics.

I've told every anecdote I could scrape together from my paltry memory by now. He gave one hell of an academic lecture at PIX in 2012 which I think touched on treasury editions like Superman vs. Spider-Man. The only photo I have of Ed and me together shows us both wearing Pirate caps standing with Gary Groth. I couldn't be more proud of that. One of the Red Room issues features the Eros Comix and Monster Comics logos, both imprints of Fantagraphics I created work for. I'm even more humbled by that.

In recent days, I've lost professional relationships over Ed. One cartoonist, literally on the other side of the world, tried telling me that Ed had become an egotist in recent years and turned some of his fan base against him; I argued back that Ed was only one guy who had his own career to tend to, and if some group of toxic fans thought they owned him they sorely needed find their own lives.

Another cartoonist of my acquaintance who practically grew up with Ed and Jim told me he was rethinking the imagery of death that has played a part in his work; he asked me what I thought about it. I told him not to worry; the Jolly Roger (the skull and cross bones) remains a fun part of Pittsburgh Pirate imagery (fans "raise the Jolly Roger" flag whenever the team wins). Ed was into the Pirates, and besides, I'm not melting down the skull ring I wear at shows.

I think it's good that people are soul-searching and I hope it yields positive results. There is too much toxicity and negativity in comics of late. (But let's not overdo it!)

I'll let you in on a little secret: I haven't read the entirety of the letter Ed left behind; I have not acquainted myself with the entirety of the allegations that were made; I've skimmed only a tiny, minuscule fraction of the news stories from legitimate outlets; and I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the potshot posts made by people who don't have the integrity to use their actual names.

And I have no intention of immersing myself in all this material, ever. I've thrown in my two cents and, as I said above, I'm gratified if folks take some comfort in what I've had to say. It's too easy to blame all this on an abstract toxic mob, or to blame anybody, for that matter. It's even easier to block it all out and pretend it's not there. All we can do is speak our truth modestly, fallibly, lacking omniscience, and carry on.

Because none of it changes the material fact that Ed Piskor loved comics and threw himself into it entirely, and he's gone now. He left behind a body of work that, after all the noise is filtered out, can speak for itself. Those of us who are lucky enough to be able to claim we knew Ed a little bit in life have no privilege in speaking about the matter except to reflect that positivity and love as best we can.

You Want a Piece of Me? The Art of the Transactional

“You want a piece of me?”

Perhaps the most hilarious moment in Seinfeld is when Frank Costanza, played by the great Jerry Stiller, asks Elaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “You want a piece of me?” Even funnier is the blooper reel of outtakes as Jerry repeatedly delivers the line to Julia, who can’t keep from cracking up.

In Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin, playing a real estate developer clearly patterned after a young, ruthless Donald Trump (Baldwin has made a minor career of playing Trump all along), tells a roomful of besieged salesmen, “Fuck you, that’s my name. … And your name is you’re wanting.”

To be found wanting is to be found lacking in something, to be short of something necessary, to be needy, needful. To want for something is a tacit admission that you don’t measure up.

The decade or so since I earned my PhD, as I’ve gravitated back into cartooning and creativity (I’m loath to say “return to comics”), has been characterized by people wanting something from each other. In 2014, Steve Bissette wanted me to participate in his (still unpublished) Naut Comics anthology; I, in turn, wanted to participate in it. (I contributed a pretty darn good N-Man story, I flatter myself to think.) We both wanted, on some level, to redeem our participation in 1963, a fraught comics experience from the 1990s, to be sure.

Sometimes, needs are at least reciprocal and simpatico.

Since then, people have wanted me to do a pin-up or a short comics story for their indy project or crowdfunder. Most recently, Joe Ely Carrales III wanted me to draw three covers for his “Secrets of the Druid” story arc in The Improbable Girl and the Wonder Kitty #7 through #9 (again, they turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself).

Often, all we want is a name—your name will look good on my project, my name will lend prestige to your project. The work itself, the love you put into it, is secondary.

Coloring by Hilary Jenkins

I wanted Bill Morrison (Bongo Comics), Chris Ecker (Big Bang Comics), Jim Pascoe (Cottons), and Jeff Smith (Bone) all to contribute text pieces for The Complete Megaton Man Universe volumes I and II. To be sure, I wanted their perspective on the 1980s and 1990s, since they were witnesses to history (I got what I wanted; thanks, guys!). But I also wanted their names; their names will make my work look bigger.

 “And your name is you’re wanting.”

I want blurbs to sell my book. You want an impressive guest list for your show. They want a variant cover for their crowdfunder. Your YouTube channel can benefit my YouTube channel. Transactional politics: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back. Quid pro quo.

Fans want an autograph, a sketch, a piece of art; innocuous enough. But sometimes, they want more. Newcomers, longtime shutouts, desperately want to break into comics before it all fades away. (This behavior only grows more frantic by the year; I’ve seen it.)

“You want a piece of me?”

I’m as guilty of it as the next needful, needy sonuvabitch.

Alan Moore, presumably, is sick and tired of people wanting something from him, especially his name. He’s become obsessed with removing his name from all his comics creations. Presumably, Hollywood wants his work, his ideas, but not in the right way; Alan doesn’t feel wanted the way he wants to be wanted.

Even when I argued that Fantagraphics’ recent edition of In Pictopia was to be a celebration of many people’s favorite Alan Moore story, Alan wasn’t moved. He still wanted his name removed.

It was a self-serving argument, to be sure. His name would have made my career look bigger; the absence of his name (In Pictopia “by Don Simpson” and company) makes me look like a fool.

So many people wanted so many things from Ed Piskor. I wanted to be interviewed on Cartoonists Kayfabe—I wondered when those guys would ever get around to me. When it finally happened last year, it was bigger than even a positive Comics Journal review, almost bigger than the publication of X-Amount of Comics. The week it took for the video to drop after the shoot was excruciating.

I wanted that interview. I needed that interview.

“And your name is you’re wanting.”

Ed, apparently, wanted things from people in return. Maybe he convinced himself the things he wanted were trivial or modest or within reason, even when they were manifestly inappropriate. Because, after all, he had given so much.

We all are capable of convincing ourselves of that rationalization.

“You chipped little bits of my self esteem away ... until I was vaporized.”

We want the wrong things from each other—I’ve seen that particularly to be the case in comics these past ten years. We want the wrong things, even as the comics medium and artform dwindles away to nothing. It’s as if everyone wants to relive the worst aspects of the heyday of the 1990s—the egos, the greed, the gimmicks—but not the art, the love. We want power, we want status, we want the next rung up the ladder of our career agenda, whatever.

“You want a piece of me?”

It’s a game of diminishing returns, musical chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Meanwhile, what really matters is sinking beneath our feet.

Ed really loved comics. People wanted so much from Ed. But was it the thing most needful?

Nobody got what they wanted from this situation, presumably.

Toxic Alan Fans and Their Disappointing Discourse

The author of X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual assails the paucity of critical debate surrounding the work ...

I have to confess that, some six months out from the publication of X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual, that it has sparked so little intelligent discussion. It’s indicative of the state of comics and the current media landscape—and our respective siloing within that landscape—that most of the people who enjoyed my work already knew about it prior to publication, and that its arrival in printed form caused very few waves.

Most of the negative commentary that I am aware of has come from Toxic Alan Moore Fans who made up their minds to hate the work without reading it. Consequently, the commentary cannot possibly run very deep. Nor do they seem to be aware that, far from being merely an Alan Moore “hit job,” my satire actually targets Toxic Alan Fans themselves.

The few negative reviews of any substance at all have been tremendously disappointing in their paucity and shallowness of thought. The only ones of which I am aware are self-posted by self-styled critics—one who shadows Comics Journal reviews and apparently has convinced himself that he’s their resident critic-in-waiting in the event that their entire staff disappear—or on Reddit or Goodreads.

A Facebook group, Cartoonist Kayfabe Ringside Seats, turns out to be a hotbed of Toxic Alan Fans who don’t even seem to grasp the group’s credo—ostensibly, it is devoted to the work of creators who have been interviewed or discussed on Cartoonist Kayfabe (which I happen to be). Again, such discussion presupposes actually having read the work in question; the last thing Toxic Alan Fans can seem to grasp is that familiarity with a given work is a prerequisite to an intelligent discussion of it.

One TAF on CKRS (to use initials) actually denounced X-Amount as a “Rick Veitch hit-job”—the kind of received misinformation philosophers and proponents of critical thinking have been warning us about for millennia.

Yesterday, for fun, I proofread one of the more substantial (for lack of a better term, since it is only by comparison to complete dreck) negative reviews of X-Amount of Comics by one of many self-styled comics critics who believe they’re doing the world some good by posting their opinions for free. I copied the text into a Word document and made at least three dozen (and more like sixty) proofreading corrections—spelling, punctuation, grammar—including the reviewer’s jarring use of the term “comics” in the singular to refer a comic book.

X-Amount is not a “comics”; it’s a comic—short for comic book, you illiterate ass.

Among several pronounced lapses in logic were the reviewer’s assertions that he had neither read the original Image Comics 1963 nor very much of my previous work, but still making sweeping, omniscient pronouncements on both, including at one point that any of my past work was better than X-Amount—how would they know, one wonders?

A hallmark of the Toxic Alan Fan is their professed belief that Alan Moore is the greatest writer who ever lived—not just of comics but in all of literature (although the only comparison ever offered is to the most banal Batman hacks, never Shakespeare or Milton)—coupled with a manifest inability of the given fan to write well or even coherently at all. Their fixation on hackneyed phrases and delight in trivial quips should be an embarrassment to themselves, let alone Alan Moore, were he even aware.

In this case, our reviewer relishes the word “confused”—he finds X-Amount “confusingly named,” its contents a “confused mélange,” and the stories of the early Megaton Man a “confusing mes” [sic]. Apparently, the worst putdown one can devise is to call a work confusing, but one has to wonder if the common denominator here is not the work but rather the reviewer’s default state of mind.

“Mess” is not the only misspelling; “Nabisco,” “infallible,” “magazine,” and even “but” are also botched.

The reviewer offers, “This is the point in which I am probably meant to give you context into what 1963 is all about,” a remarkably tortured sentence that, strictly speaking, makes no literal sense, simply because it employs a number of phrases idiosyncratically. For example, usually it’s the point at which something happens, not in which something happens—one can hardly imagine being inside a point. Also, context usually surrounds a work, it’s not something that is given into a work—most likely, the reviewer meant they were supposed to offer some insight into 1963. Except that he’s not reviewing 1963 nor has he ever read 1963—he’s reviewing X-Amount of Comics and ostensibly offering insight into X-Amount of Comics—or providing context surrounding X-Amount of Comics, as the case may be. Sadly, neither context nor insight are the reviewer’s to offer at all—only confusion.

What is noteworthy about the review is the swipe it takes at my staking my “claim on comics history,” particularly my bold assertion that Megaton Man #5 influenced the tone of Watchmen—not all that bold considering Megaton Man #4 indisputably influenced Watchmen #4, with its “on patrol” scene lifted verbatim. It’s a wonder that the reviewer is able to discern something as subtle as an historical claim, considering how ignorant he is of comics history.

It would be futile to point out that the reviewer has missed the point of X-Amount of Comics, and that his assessment, presumably after having actually read it, is not substantially deeper than other Toxic Alan Fans who have judged the work without having read it at all. Readers who are predisposed to expecting X-Amount of Comics to be only about Alan Moore—pro or con—are going to be disappointed that Alan Moore factors in very little. It is, in fact, an essay on universes and syncretism and archetypes in an age of intellectual property, and a contemplation on stories and storytelling—and in some small way how a few spoiled, pampered storytellers can’t even be bothered to make good on their promises to finish a story when nothing in the world stands in their way. Sad to say that devotees of the works of Alan Moore seem so ill-prepared for such a discussion.

 

A fairly thoughtful reflection on X-Amount of Comics:

Convoluted Comics & Stories: Retroactive World-Building the Megaton Man Universe!

My former publisher recently remarked on how I should have ditched my convoluted storylines and just focused on hit-and-run spoofs of industry trends back in the day. That advice comes about forty years too late, since I have since fallen down the rabbit hole of continuity and retroactive world-building.

The following is an excerpt (!) of my Afterword to The Complete Megaton Man Universe, volume I, forthcoming from Fantagraphics Underground in 2024. It delves into my evolving thinking on continuity and world-building:

So, I had this one-shot, Megaton Man #1—the first full-length comic book I ever created, and apart from sample page layouts and some very short pieces, the first thing to amount to a complete story—and a publisher who wanted me to turn it into a series—Kitchen Sink Press. A former underground publisher, now the home of Will Eisner, and a boutique imprint of creator-owned comics, they wanted Megaton Man as an ongoing color series, no less. The first issue, in my estimation, barely held together at all—now they want me to do it again? Denis may as well have asked me to make lightning strike twice.

“Worldbuilding” is a fancy term referring to the creative work science fiction and fantasy authors perform before ever writing a word of prose intended to be read by a reader—game developers do something similar for elaborate immersive computer games before ever a line is coded. I certainly had no notion whatsoever of worldbuilding in the case of Megaton Man #1 and even less concern for it. Megaton Man #1 was a parody of Silver Age superhero comics, and I assumed readers would get the tropes: the ineffectual secret identity, the major metropolitan newspaper newsroom, the team headquarters doubling as a mad scientist’s laboratory, the evil corporation, the arch-villain mastermind behind every machination of the criminal underworld, and so on. It would have seemed ridiculous to me at the time to waste any effort on worldbuilding for Megaton Man #1, even if it were to become an ongoing series.

Today, one can go to a comic book shop or bookstore and buy collections of comic book series—either a few issues or hundreds at a shot—and sit down and study them to get some sense of how to construct a series or multi-issue story arc. I could have done the same thing by reading single issues—I’d have had to borrow a long run of comics from somebody and untape all the bags in order to read them, since I had already dispensed with most of my Marvel Comics—but I could have managed it.

In those days, even though Will Eisner was flogging the term “graphic novel” like he’d trademarked it, there were few examples of stories longer than a few issues. Come to think of it, in all my years of reading Marvel Comics, including new issues as well as the coverless comics I scavenged from the mid-sixties, I can count on my fingers the number of times I ever actually read a complete story from start to finish. Comic book stories didn’t have beginnings, middles, and ending so much as endless and interminable “continued next issues”—which could seldom be located!

Moreover, “continuity,” in my lexicon, was a purely pejorative term. Fans—including the literal-minded writers and editors who rose from the ranks of fandom to seize control of the major comic book publishers (from the generation of professional grownups who’d created the comics I’d read as a kid)—were obsessed with continuity. Letters columns and fanzines were filled with Talmudic attempts to rationalize every inconsistent story element introduced by waves of creative teams over decades into a holistic, rational whole (the quintessential example being the presence or absence of lines on the soles of Flash’s boot as indicative of whether a story took place on Earth I or Earth II) and arguments over real or “imaginary” stories. This seemed to me tantamount to arguments of how many angels can stand on the point of a pin, and worse than futile; this was supposed to be an artform, for Christ’s sake, not a box score from last week’s little league game.

In fact, there were supposedly self-appointed “continuity czars” at both Marvel and DC—editors who took it upon themselves to police storylines throughout the line and forbid any story element that didn’t fit established continuity. It didn’t matter whether a comic book was fun or engaging or even a pleasant reading experience—which no doubt contributed to the dwindling numbers of readers of comic books and its near-disappearance from American life; all that mattered was whether the trite events depicted in otherwise hacked out comic books fit into the continuity or not.

Further, the books and arthouse cinema I was consuming in those days also distrusted narrative. Authors like William S. Burroughs and film directors—to which the term auteur originally applied—were particularly the ones who were in charge of all aspects of a film, up to and including ad-libbing or completely obviating any supplied script, even in the film-factory of Hollywood. The great ones, or so I idealized, didn’t even need a script—Chaplin, Welles, Truffaut, Godard, even Jerry Lewis. Scripts were passé, weak tools for the literal minded who could not embrace the true potential of the artform—which had to do more with submitting to a dreamlike, visionary-ecstatic state than following a rote plot or tired formula.

Besides, why would I want to study long runs of superhero comics anyway? Megaton Man #1 was supposed to be an attack on tired, superhero genre conventions. The obsession with continuity, shared by editors and readers alike, was anathema to my notion of cartooning as an expressive medium; I saw my satire in Megaton Man at least in part as an attempt to “deprogram” cultish superhero fans from such meaningless dogmas.

All this to say that, by ideology and predilection—and my own inexperience—I had a pretty weak sense of story, even for a comic book artist. Witty dialogue, sure—and judging from The Dreamer roughs I once was privileged to behold, a better speller without a dictionary than Will Eisner—but writing words to go over a sequence of pictures isn’t quite the same thing as writing in an authorial sense. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Despite what I fancied to be my postmodern aversion to “continuity,” however, I regarded the experiences and emotional histories of my characters as precious and something of value. Their lives had meaning for me. And, whatever else, they had survived Megaton Man #1—there was no going back, for them or for me.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place. All through the summer of 1984, I struggled with how to do more Megaton Man without simply repeating Megaton Man #1. How was I to top the presumably brilliant deconstruction of the superhero genre I’d accomplished in the first issue? How could I further decimate the notion of “continuity” but at the same time further the lives of my nascent characters without pandering to mere escapism of power fantasies (pejorative terms favored by Comics Journal critics of superhero comics in those days)? What else could I do with this fucking thing called Megaton Man?

“What happens next?”—i.e., making it up as I went along—had gotten me through an entire issue. In some instances, I started drawing a page before I knew what happened in the next panel, let alone the next page—I distinctly recall page 5 of issue #1 as being such a page, for example. Fortunately, it takes longer to draw than to write, and believing in luck, somehow I always managed to come up with that next thing. This, I would later learn, was called “flying by the seat of your pants”—Pete Poplaski was the first person I ever heard use this phrase.

But would “What happens next?” get me very far into a second issue, let alone a series?

Luckily, the publication of Megaton Man #1 was repeatedly delayed as the publisher searched for a different, more affordable color printer. This gave me enough time to spin my wheels and more than enough rope to hang myself. The result was some sixty-four pages of inchoate, disjointed, non-sequitur material, a mish-mash of false starts and aborted strategies: dream sequences of nuclear war; a flash-forward to a landing of aliens in Central Park a là The Day the Earth Stood Still; a side trip down the highways and byways with Pammy and Stella on the road. I even imagined the See-Thru Girl, now pregnant, returning as a malevolent Earth Mother, engineering an attempted assassination of Trent Phloog by the Hordes of Krupp (a nod to my new publisher) resulting in the destruction of a Manhattan skyscraper—fifteen years before 9/11.

Frantic, I sent photocopies of this material, some of it only penciled, off to Wisconsin, asking if there was anything there. Denis and editor Dave Schreiner agreed—none of it made a damn bit of sense. But they assured me they had absolute faith in the artist and were sure I’d think of something.

Later, much of this material would be cannibalized for various set pieces in issues #3 and #4, or extensively reworked or redrawn entirely in #9. A few surviving examples that were not so repurposed have been included in the backmatter of this volume.

But for the time being, I forgot about the whole thing and took a long walk. It was a mild summer day, and my walk led from my apartment, then on West Forest Avenue in the North Cass District of Detroit, up through the Wayne State campus, past the campus of Burroughs (the business machine company started by the namesake grandfather of William S.) and the GM Building, back down Woodward Avenue, then home—some four miles, at least.

By the time I returned to my drawing board, I had it! The See-Thru Girl had left the Megatropolis Quartet and Pamela Jointly had left The Manhattan Project, right? Then Megaton Man would fill the vacancy on the Quartet and become the new controversial columnist—and arch-critic of Megaton Man—for the Project.

This would set a pattern for the series: Things would never return to normal; they would only become more and more screwed up.

O felix culpa[i]—I had already established in my first issue that Megaton Man had fallen out of a timeless stasis into an ongoing history, yet to be determined. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine issues—what of it? The Child’s Garden of Eden was over; I was now on the Road to Perdition. Or, the Yellow Brick Road of continuity. Do as I say, not as I do.

The accompanying graphic, a “family tree” of Simon Phloog, son of Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl, is some of the background world-building work I've been doing since 2015. I’ve also developed timelines, a lexicon of some six hundred names and terms, and other resources for myself that readers will never see in the ongoing prose stories and comics I am creating with the Megaton Man characters.

I've done a complete one-eighty, in other words, when it comes to continuity. Shows what forty years and an over-education (not to mention an early exposure to Philip José Farmer’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life) will do!

______________

[i] See Mitchell, Andrew J. “Writing the Fortunate Fall: “O felix culpa!” in Finnegans Wake.” James Joyce Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2010): 589–606.

"Aaargh!" Denis Kitchen Speaks Out!

Below are some select correspondence from my collection concerning the history of Megaton Man, particularly issues surrounding Megaton Man #11, a crucial turning point in the series and narrative. Scholars are encouraged to explore the Kitchen Sink Papers at Columbia University (which I have not consulted) for a fuller context.

Does this Bach Cadence have a name?

Does this Bach cadence have a name? It is from J.S. Bach, the 3rd violin partita, BWV 1006, measures 25-27 (you can download the complete score on IMSLP):

X-Amount of Reader Mail!!

Letters, oh, we get letters … this one from no less a personage than former major domo at Cartoon Books and Monroeville manager of Half-Price Books (and splitting image of X-Ray Boy) Andries Mulder!

2018 Don Simpson Interview

Don Simpson interview from Comic Book Cartoonist, volume 1, number 1 (Comic Art Press, summer 2018), conducted by “Ski” Suharski. © 2018; used without permission.

New Megaton Man Logos and the Stories They Will Tell

Recently, I have been working on several new vector art logo designs for upcoming Megaton Man projects; preliminary concepts appear below. Since fans almost immediately ask, "When can I order this? When is this coming out?" I thought this would be as good a time as any to discuss what I plan for 2024 and beyond (if all goes according to plan!).

Print and Podcast Interview Requests

I will no longer be granting print or podcast interviews indiscriminately. If you are interested in an interview, please be advised of the following: