“It is with a very broken heart that I share with you that my older brother, Ed, passed away today. Please keep our family in your prayers as this is the hardest thing we have ever had to go through.” With this note on her Facebook account, the sister of comic artist Ed Piskor (Pennsylvania, 1982) confirmed his premature death in what various American media have indicated as a suicide.
The independent comic author, whose works include the one awarded with an Eisner ‘Hip hop family tree’ (Flow Press) y ‘X-Men Grand Design’ (‘The great novel of the Sydgoblin), 21 years old, who at the time of the events was 17. She spread some screenshots of messages exchanged in 2020 with the cartoonist, inviting her to sleep at her house and calling her a “naughty girl.” “Are you 17 or 18? I will be very angry if you say 17 because this crushes me at that age,” one of them prayed.
“I’m an outcast”
“I have been murdered by internet stalkers. In massive numbers,” Piskor said in his note. “Some of you have absolutely contributed to my death by gossiping for yourselves. I was not an AI. I was a real human being. You destroyed my self-esteem to pieces for a week until it evaporated (…) I no longer have friends (…). I’m a disappointment to everyone who’s ever liked me. I am an outcast. News agencies at my door and harassing my elderly parents. Putting my addresses on TV or the internet. “How could I ever return to my town, where everyone knows me?”
Three vignettes from ‘Hip hop family tree’, with Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Banbaataa, the holy trinity of the origins of hip hop. / ED PISKOR
In the note, Piskor claimed that the messages with Dwyer had been taken out of context. “I’m so sorry I was so stupid. Definitely, I should never have talked to Molly D. (…) I promise that I am innocent. Out of context everything sounds horrible. It was the height of Covid, there was no end in sight and I was alone. It made me happy to have the internet to talk to people with common interests.” And he added: “I wasn’t trying to offer professional favors or use my position (what a joke) to get into anyone’s panties. “We’re part of the same art world, so why not introduce new friends to old friends?”
Canceled jobs
As a result of the accusations, Piskor saw how an exhibition of his work scheduled for the end of March in Pittsburgh was postponed indefinitely, how Jim Rugg, with whom he hosted the ‘Cartoonist Kayfabe’ podcast, broke off relations with him and regrets that The $75,000 contract he was about to sign for Switchblade Shorties with Abrams vanished.
Piskor hoped his death would “make people think twice before joining the internet-feeding frenzy.”
