Episode 7.5 - Is Ed Piskor Truly "Outlaw" and Who Cares Either Way?
An opinion piece, mine just uses less fancy words than TCJ.
One complaint I get from people about Ed Piskor is that Ed isn’t truly “outlaw” as if that decreases his legitimacy as an artist. I spent a little time thinking about it not because I really care but more because it’s a recurring thing I hear so I was curious about the word “outlaw”.
Definition of “Outlaw”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines outlaw as:
a lawless person or a fugitive from the law
a person or organization under a ban or restriction
one that is unconventional or rebellious
Items 1 and 2 don’t apply. Item 3 does so let’s explore that a little bit.
Ed started out on the indie scene drawing for Harvey Pekar. His graphic novel “Wizzywig” was self-published in 2009 before being published by Top Shelf Productions in 2012. He showed good business sense by selling his self-published books on his own and attending attend hacker conventions to sell Wizzywig (because it’s about the rise and fall of a hacker). It worked as the book gave him a lot of notoriety. Is that unconventional or rebellious? Unconventional for sure.
From 2012 through 2016 he began publishing “Hip Hop Family Tree” (2012-2015 via Boing Boing and 2013-2016 via Fantagraphics) which was a comprehensive treasury-sized edition about the birth and rise of hip hop from the 1970s through the mid-1980s. A white guy whose previous claim to fame being a book about a computer hacker taking on the birth of hip hop was a risk on paper, but Ed’s storytelling, drawing ability and the insane amount of research he must have done for the book earned him a spot on the New York Times Bestseller List for volume 1. Those books have been translated into several different languages and are highly regarded and financially successful. Unconventional? The subject matter definitely is.
From 2018 through 2019 Piskor published “X-Men: Grand Design” for Marvel Comics. In my opinino, this was the first X-Men book I had purchased since Grant Morrison left X-Men in 2004. It was a wonderful series, receiving critical acclaim and fan acceptance. However, this is one of the areas that Piskor receives criticism based on my own experience. The complaint can be summarized as follows:
How can you call yourself outlaw if you worked for Marvel?
That’s a fair point but Ed himself said on the CK Channel that he decided to “lay down and take that three count” and “do the job” and it paid off for him pretty well. He was able to leverage the newfound popularity from Grand Design to (along with Jim Rugg) create the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel. The channel offers interviews, commentary about comics, reviews of comics mailed in to them and covers a wide range of genres in comics. Is that unconventional? Hell yeah. No, they didn’t invent comics YouTube channel but they did redefine what you could do with it. That’s unconventional too.
Did Ed do the job for Marvel? Yes he did. But guys like Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Richard Corben, Peter Bagge and Moebius all did work for Marvel when they were already established as stars. They never said they were outlaw (although you can definitely consider Corben outlaw) but they are great artists that are defined by their independent work and are not associated with doing mainstream superheroes. So why does Piskor get crap doing Marvel work but Corben doesn’t?
Another complaint that I hear is that the Cartoonist Kayfabe channel doesn’t interview indie creators and focuses on big names. During a Noah Van Sciver youtube podcast, Casanova Frankenstein (whose work I like) asked why Ed and Jim aren’t interviewing indie creators instead of “interviewing millionaires” to which Noah replied “because those guests bring a lot of views” and Noah added that he would interview them to on his channel if they were interested.
It’s obvious that Ed and Jim are interested in growing the channel and gaining whatever business development and financial rewards that go with that. In 24 months they have gained over 50,000 subscribers to their channel. This without a push by the big two publishers, or the multitude of comics “journalism” sites. They did it the old fashioned way: They provided great content that attracted serious professionals enough to the point where they agreed to be guests on the show. Is that unconventional or rebellious? I think so.
What has Ed done since X-Men Grand Design? He’s creating Red Room, a horror comic that is gruesome in its violence that exists in a world that isn’t that hard to believe exists. I tried to find the units shipped for issue 1 and couldn’t (that was unexpected) but issues 2 and 3 shipped 28K and 27K copies via Diamond, respectively. That’s more than Marvel’s Iron Man did those same two months and Red Room is published by Fantagraphics, a publisher that hasn’t published a monthly comic book in YEARS. Ed achieved this almost solely by advertising on his own channel and word of mouth. He’s done four issues, is releasing a trade collection of those issues later this month and plans on 8 more issues. Ed could have done something more mainstream like YA or revisited a subject that he’s done before (superheroes, music, etc.). Instead, he created an outlaw horror comic that would make the ghosts of EC proud. Is that unconventional or rebellious? I think so.
I think in the end the question really deals with how you define “outlaw”. If you’re talking about being outlaw is defined by always being against the system then no, he’s not. Most financially successful artists aren’t. But if you’re talking about someone that is doing work that no one else is doing vs. doing what everyone else is doing, taking risks and going against the grain then he probably does qualify.
One thing that doesn’t get mentioned to me but I believe has to be a factor is his cockiness. It reminds me of something Dusty Rhodes said in a documentary I saw: “If you’re in this business and you don’t want to be world champion, you’re in the wrong business.”