Ed Piskor (1982-2024)

This week, cartoonist Ed Piskor committed suicide in the wake of the relentless online pillorying and overnight destruction of his career that followed upon allegations of sexual misconduct, of which he insisted he was innocent. Piskor’s work was not really to my taste, but I often enjoyed the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel he co-hosted. I was always impressed by the manifest love, respect, and appreciation he showed for the great comic book artists of the past. These are attractive and admirable attitudes to take toward those from whom one has learned.

Piskor’s suicide note is heartbreaking, and includes this passage:

I have no friends in this life any longer. I’m a disappointment to everybody who liked me. I’m a pariah. News organizations at my door and hassling my elderly parents. It’s too much. Putting our addresses on tv and the internet. How could I ever go back to my small town where everyone knows me? Some good people reached out and tried to help me through this whole thing but I’m just not strong enough. The instinctual part of my brain knows that I’m no longer part of the tribe. I’m exiled and banished. I’m giving into my instincts and fighting them at the same time. Self preservation has lost out.

This episode vividly illustrates how diabolical is the moment through which we are currently living, when the lust to defame others and stir up a mob against them – always a temptation to which human beings are prone – has been massively exacerbated by social media. I don’t know if Piskor was indeed innocent, but neither do those who hounded him to the point where he lost hope. May God have mercy on his soul and on his family.