F is for CKRS

It's all too easy to blame some abstract, toxic social media for recent events. That notwithstanding, this is what I wrote down in my private journal last year (August 31, 2023) about one very specific, concrete element within that toxicity:

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.