Beat to Death: The Ed Piskor "Grooming" Hoax

On Saturday, May 30, 2024, an acquaintance messaged me: “Off topic, but can you believe all that crap going on with Piskor??” I hadn’t heard a word about Ed Piskor—apparently, I was living on the dark side of the moon—even though social media had blown up the Saturday before.

Newsflash: Multiple Women Were Fond of Ed!

This hasn’t gone viral (yet), but I’m sure when the “trained ninja” staff at comics’ most lethal gossip site finds out about this, that will change in a hurry. It’s a post from Reddit from a month ago:

The Death of Socrates and What We Athenians Should Do About It

One argument that will surely trigger me in 2024 and beyond goes something like: “For all we know, Ed suffered from depression and was already suicidal.” If you have the temerity or foolishness to run this notion past this 62-year-old cartoonist, you had best be on the other side of the table and prepared to run like hell and disappear into the crowd when you do so. And make sure somebody’s ready to capture all this on their smartphone, too—the video will surely go viral.

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:

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 ...