Ed Piskor
Wizzywig wraps up online; book to follow
As we noted last year, Ed Piskor has been reworking his comic Wizzywig, the story of a phone hacker and his escalating career of techno-pranks. He wrapped it up this week, and the comic is complete on his site, so now is a good time to grab a cup of coffee and read the whole thing. Piskor has a nice, clean style, and he has completely redrawn this comic from its earlier, three-volume incarnation, tightening it up considerably along the way and updating it to include references to Wikileaks. There’s a print edition in the works from Top Shelf, due out next year, and that should be worth saving your pennies for.
Make mine MoCCA: Creators and small press
Of course, the really great thing about this weekend’s MoCCA Festival is the huge flock of individual creators who go there to show off their work. Here’s the full list, and here are a few of the highlights that jumped out at me. Feel free to point out the good stuff I missed in the comments section.
Cathy Leamy will be at the Boston Comics Roundtable table with her brand-new diary comic What’s the Word?, a collection of her diary comics from Metrokitty.
Neil Kleid will happily sign copies of his comics, mini-comics, and graphic novels (The Big Kahn, Brownsville), and anything else he has work in (including the Fraggle Rock anthology), but if you really want to make his day, bring him an obscure soda.
Stephanie Yue, who illustrates the Guinea Pig: Pet Shop Private Eye graphic novels (not just adorable, but funny for both adults and kids) will be there, as will her editor Carol Burrell, who draws SPQR Blues under the nickname Klio.
Rica Takashima will have a special doujinshi just for MoCCA. Rica is a yuri (lesbian) manga creator and the author of the much-acclaimed Rica ‘tte Kanji?, which Shaenon Garrity described, approvingly, as “as cute as a blender full of kittens.”
If your tastes tend more toward the retro-bizzare, check out Coin Op Studio, which will be debuting the charmingly titled Coin Op No. 3: Municipal Parking and Waterfall at the show.
Start reading now: New, improved Wizzywig
A panel from the first page of Wizzywig
Drawn in an underground-comix style reminiscent of the old Zap Comix, Wizzywig tells the story of Kevin Phenicle, who begins as a phone phreak and is pulled deeper and deeper into the world of hacking. Piskor, who collaborated with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor: Our Movie Year and The Beats: A Graphic History, has already published the first two volumes of Wizzywig, and they are both available for free download from his website as well as for sale in better comics stores everywhere. What he’s putting up as a webcomic is a new and improved version. One page is up so far, and he plans to update on Wednesdays and Sundays; for more background, take a look at Shaun Manning’s CBR interviews with Piskor about volumes 2 and 3. (Via Comics Worth Reading.)
Your video of the day: Ed Piskor profile
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a nice video profile on the Wizzywig creator. (via)