Following Sexual Misconduct Accusations, ‘X-Men: Grand Design’ Creator Ed Piskor Passes Away From Apparent Suicide: “Nobody Against Me Would Be Convinced”
Spencer Baculi
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In a devastating reminder of why such heinous claims should be settled by an actual legal authority and not the court of public opinion, after been accused via social media of having groomed an underage girl, X-Men: Grand Design and Hip-Hop Family Tree creator Ed Piskor has passed away at the age of 41 as from an apparent suicide.
The tragic saga of the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel host’s final days first kicked off on March 24th when indie comic artist Molly “sydgoblin” Dwyer took to her personal Instagram account to accuse Piskor, then roughly 37-years-old, of attempting to “groom” her when she was just 17-years old.
Sharing four screenshots showing DMs exchanged between the two amidst the COVID-19 lockdowns in May 2020 as evidence to her claim, the first of which showed Piskor offering a compliment to her artistic abilities, Dwyer opened her accusation, “Ok Ed Piskor is a f–king CREEP he likes little highschool girls and slid in my DMs when I was 17 years old.”
“I didn’t know of him and he found me simply by me liking one of his pictures.” Dwyer continued, “Sending me a post of myself in my school uniform calling me a cute nerdy girl and saying to come out to Pittsburgh and stay with him, he’d take me out to lunch to meet other pg cartoonists. Overall f–king weird with no gray area for what he was trying to do over the course of a year. (Obvious to anyone on this planet).”
“Calling me a good girl, and a naughty girl all the time,” she said. “Sending me unfinished pages of his as a ‘secret’ and gassing me up constantly basically trying to groom me into whatever the f–k. Saying my art was so good and saying he’d promote my work. Eventually, as COVID phased out and I think he saw I was not just some nobody highschool girl drawing gore art, I started ghosting him. Eventually understanding this was WEIRD AS F–K.”
Dropping another screenshot in support of her grooming accusation, this one showing Piskor praising a piece of hers as “incredible work” before lamenting “Are you 17 or 18? Imma be so mad if you say 17 because this crushes me at this game,” Dwyer asserted, “I don’t like f–king sex pests. I don’t like creepy old men who think they have the ability to play around with malliable young girls with no real grasp on the situation because their predator has a successful career in COMIC?!”
“If anyone would like to see further evidence of this just DM me, I don’t have a problem posting the rest of the screen shots but I don’t feel the need to share it in extensive detail for hours and hours,” she wrote. “Ed could argue and say that was ‘not his intention’ or that he was just being friendly. I find NOTHING normal or friendly about a 40-year-old man asking a highschool girl about her classes, calling her a good girl/naughty girl etc. etc. Asking her to come visit him. Saying we’ll be ‘partners in crime’ and asking if I snitch or not? Like what the f–k?”
“This is not a ‘cancellation’ of Ed Piskor,” Dwyer then declared. “I’m just telling you the truth about this person. The truth that a lot of other cartoonists are AWARE OF! Who I know for a fact are aware of: That Ed Piskor likes YOUNG GIRLS. And he will TRY to use his ‘fame’ to get them to FaceTime him, give him attention, or make them come and stay with him. I don’t know if this has worked for him, buit it doesn’t matter. This behavior is disgusting. This is me saying what happened in 2020-2021 and if this happened to you, you’re not alone unfortunately. I need a t-shirt that says ‘ED PISKOR TRIED TO GROOM ME AND I DIDN’T EVEN GET A FREE COPY OF X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN‘.”
“To this day Ed Piskor slides into my DMs calling me ‘kiddo’, further confirming our inappropriate age gap,” she further accused. “Seeing that I am not just some random girl who can draw that he can groom enough to come to Pittsburgh to watch him do his stupid strip he’s doing now about: LITTLE GIRLS FROM BROKEN HOMES. SWITCHBLADE SHORTIES IS DISTURBING COMING FROM A F–KING CREEP WHO LIKES LITTLE GIRLS. WHAT THE F–K!”
In a subsequent third set of DMs shared by Dwyer – which notably lacked full context, as the relevant screenshots were clearly taken from an in-progress-conversation – Piskor writes to her, “Naughty girl! That’s my favorite! I feel like you’d be a good partner in crime. You’re not a snitch are you? If we robbed some banks you wouldn’t rat me out would you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dwyer replies. “I’d prefer to be a Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo [the main characters of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas]”
“Good girl,” Piskor praises in return. “You give the correct answers!”
In a fourth screenshot, Piskor can be seen offering Dwyer an open invitation to stay at his home “if you ever wander into my side of the state for a few days.”
Several hours later, Dwyer returned to Instagram to clarify, in the face of numerous individuals believing her message was meant to dissuade artists and fans from interacting on social media, that “I am not trying to say this. I was answering [his questions] freely. I felt like he was TRYING to groom me.”
“This is about the inappropriate nature of Ed Piskor’s communication with me,” she said. “I was way younger than him and starstruck that someone ‘famous’ liked my art I was posting to essentially no one but my friends. Also, having a boyfriend who knew of his work and wanted me to push and respond to him did not help. I am totally fine. I am not trying to ruin anyone’s career or try and say people shouldn’t reach our to artists or artists stop reaching out to their audience on social media or whatever the fuck. I’m stating that IT WAS WEIRD I WAS A 17 TURNED 18. A SENIOR IN HIGHSCHOOL.”
“HE WAS 40 THERE IS NO GOOD OR WHOLESOME REASON FOR A GROWN ASS MAN TO BE CALLING A YOUNG GIRL NAUGHTY OR TELLING HER TO COME VISIT HIM, PERVING ON HER PICTURES IN HER UNIFORM, CONSTANT COMPLIMENTING WITH VAGUE IMPLICATIONS OF HELPING HER CAREER BY STICKING WITH HIM,” Dwyer further roared to her followers. “THAT IS WHAT I AM TRYING TO SAY BY STATING THIS S–T. I’M 21 NOW. I DON’T LIKE THAT SEX PESTS CAN DO WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT AND EVERYONE JUST LETS THEM BECAUSE THEY HAVE SUCCESS IN ANY FIELD WHAT IF I WENT TO HIS HOUSE? WAS MORE NAIVE? MORE DESPERATE FOR ATTENTION? WEIRD AS F–K! I DON’T KNOW WHAT GOES ON IN HIS LIFE SO WHAT IF IT’S POSSIBLE HE HAS CONTINUED TO DO THIS SINCE? DO PEOPLE KNOW AND SAY NOTHING?”
In response to Dwyer’s accusations, Piskor went scorched earth on his social media accounts, deleting not only his own Twitter account, but also both the Cartoon Kayfaybe account and YouTube channel.
And though he would restore them a short time later, this response would ultimately turn out to be a haunting prelude to events yet to come.
The next day, a second woman, artist Wolly Might, came forward to likewise accuse Piskor of inappropriate sexual behavior.
“It’s come to my attention that an experience I had in Pittsburgh is similar to several women’s experiences regarding Ed Piskor,” wrote Might on March 25th. “I reached out to Ed and he eagerly invited me over. We had plenty of fun and discussed animation and comics. That was until he asked me to suck his d–k in exchange for his agent’s number.”
“He then asked me to join him for an open relationship so that if I wanted to ‘eat p—-y’, I’d be free to do so,” she continued. “I have recently learned that he was attempting to line up some of those ‘girls’ at that time and guess what? Today I learned some of them were minors.”
“Ed and I’s exchanges were short lived, only about two or so years,” Might concluded of her initial accusation. “We would check on one another every couple months. It was clear he had grown afraid of me. I’ve warned several people over the years about him, so those of you that already know, know. I ask that you be supportive and kind of all the women that come forward in the coming weeks.”
In a follow-up thread, Might continued, “I’ll delete this eventually because I don’t want this gross slimy scumbag to taint my timeline for good so I’ll keep this short and brief: Several people are coming forward with their Ed Piskor stories. At first I shrugged it off because I’ve known he was a creep for a very long time, which some of you already know because I’ve been vocal about it – but recently I learned that one of them was a MINOR.”
“He was perusing a MINOR at the same time as me,” she asserted. “I know she’s getting a ton of shit for what happened so I’m posting this in support of her. “
“Also, to the weird people saying we’re doing this for press,” added Might, “dude is literally a f–king loser that had to resort to making a YouTube channel to pressure small comic shops into bulk buying a bunch of unsellable comics from him that take up space on shelves while he uses false bulk ordering numbers to falsify his success.”
“I remember when this guy first met me and tried to impress me, before the channel existed, he would talk shit on @jimruggart and call him a bad artist and ALSO said he would never draw gore for attention,” she said.
“It’s so weird seeing him use the same lines on me (calling me a good girl and a nerdy bum) on a literal child,” she added. “I’m speechless.”
“Anyway,” Might ultimately affirmed, “I will be deleting this like I said because that guy doesn’t deserve any more attention ever again.”
In response to Might’s thread, a third woman, Twitch Streamer Taffeta Darling, would come forward with her own claims of inappropriate behavior towards Piskor.
“I can %100 attest to his behavior,” wrote Darling. “Last year Piskor invited me to his home because he wanted to draw me nude, in exchange for me getting introduced to bigger industry folks. This was mid July and he shared he had just ended a relationship.”
“He offered the ‘nude pinups’ in exchange for a weekend in NJ area (I think)” she added, “and that the pinups could be sold by both.”
Compounding matters for Piskor, around this time, a screenshot began to circulate wherein the late artist could allegedly be seen having ‘liked’ an Instagram picture of Dwyer from 2016 – at which time she would have been roughly 13-14 years-old.
Following the publication of these accusations, public opinion – unsurprisingly so given the absolutely disgusting claims leveled against him – quickly turned against Piskor.
On March 26th, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust postponed a planned exhibition of Piskor’s work due to the accusations leveled against him, in particular those made by Dwyer.
“The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust learned on Sunday of allegations of misconduct made by an individual against artist Ed Piskor, whose work was scheduled to be on exhibition at 707 Penn Gallery starting April 6, 2024,” the institution told local ABC affiliate WTAE 4. “The Trust takes the allegations very seriously and decided yesterday to postpone the exhibition indefinitely.”
Then, on March 29th, Piskor’s Cartoon Kayfaybe co-host, Street Angel creator and Hulk: Grand Design creator Jim Rugg, announced via a now-deleted Instagram post that, “In light of this past week’s shocking revelations, I find it necessary to reevaluate my professional associations to ensure they align with my values of respect and integrity. Therefore, I have ended my working relationship with Ed Piskor.”
Meanwhile, taking notice of the fact that various elements of her story had been twisted and taken out of context as it spread across social media, Dwyer returned to her Instagram account to declare, “Frustrating and horrifying to keep having to reiterate myself: STOP BRINGING ME INTO YOUR STUPID AND WEIRD COMIC POLITICS I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IS EVEN GO ON!”
“‘Why did you not go to the police? Why didn’t you block him immediately?! This was all bait! This is slander! Social media is a witch hunt! She knew [what] she was doing!’,” she continued. “Dude. No I didn’t. I was in highschool and wow I was maybe starstruck by the idea this older person was in my messages seeking me out and complimenting me all the time! Maybe highschoolers make uneducated decisions because their brains are not developed. Not as developed as say a….almost 40-year-old man.”
“Ed Piskor did not follow me since I was 14, you people are just making s–t up for fun because you’re bored?? He would go back and like my pictures and stuff. Yes, I was even younger in them. He did know me until I was 16., I don’t understand. I am not trying to write Ed Piskor out of history of end his career. This has all been very deeply scary and I am trying very hard to be strong but some of the response I’ve gotten has been just straigfht up incel-level awful. I just wanted to make it known for other girls. How else could they know?! If nobody says anything! I was not sending my story to news outlets. I’m not beckoning to anyone I could find in Pittsburgh to have him crucified. Calling his agent or publicist. Phoning Chris f–king Hansen.”
“I am 21 now,” Dwyer clarified. “I am fine! I WAS NEVER HARMED! He never sent me any dick pics. He never made me take nudes either. nothing like that. What is so hard in the concept that I wanted it known on my art account, where I have young artists follow me, that he picked me out randomly. That I look back to our interaction and find it really inappropriate and weird and he always kept messaging me, not the other way around. That this particular person does this behavior! I have been told by other cartoonists who knew him that he did and I am frustrated with every way this has happened. I was filled with anger not because I feel scorned and hurt by the effect or gravity of this experience but because as I grew older, looking back, it became more and more disgusting to me and concerning that I actually felt that it was like, normal and cool and exciting at the time. Annoyed that he still continued to reach out to me to this day! That he felt confident and comfortable with the idea he had been talking to me since I was in high school and never saw any issue with it either.”
“Like maybe he shouldn’t have been texting highschoolers at his grown ass age,” she wrote. “What possibly could we have in common to talk about. Why would he call me such strange things? I felt frustrated [at] how many people I have told in comics who have just said ‘ooo that’s so weird and gross’ and that’s it. Say ‘He’s a great artist though’ and move on. Realizing I am just continuing to enable a collective secret between people and then he can just keep doing what they want with young girls. God forbid because it’s easier to say nothing.
“Ed Piskor is not a pedophile,” she concluded her post. “Ed Piskor is just a f–king creep. Why do I have to be complacent in it? Why would it not make sense that I am posting this information publicly on the same silly app he reached out to me on. I’m just so tired. What are we supposed to do with creeps. Let me know next time. I will follow the proper procedure.”
Sadly, this saga would ultimately come to a head on April 1st when Piskor published what would turn out to be his suicide note to his personal Facebook page.
[Editor’s Note: In the interest of posterity, Piskor’s full message is shared in its full, original form below. However, out of respect for the deceased, it will be shared as a block of ‘quote text’, which will prevent his final words from both contributing to this article’s official word and being interspersed with monetized advertisements.]
I’m so sorry for being so stupid. I definitely should never have talked with Molly D. The language and optics look real dumb at best but I promise my innocence. Especially out of context it looks terrible. It was the height of Covid with no end in sight and I was alone through most of it . I was just happy to have the internet to talk to people with common interests. The way that I noticed her was when she would like a bunch of my picture at once. I wasn’t trolling Instagram randomly but I definitely shouldn’t have chatted with her when I found out how young she was. Seeing someone younger representing r crumb and GG Allin gave me hope for the next generations and made me curious. Curiosity killed the cartoonist. There was no way I’d have a 17 yr old stay at my place. Maybe not 18 even. I was forward projecting to some unknown future where Covid lockdowns were finished and we could see people again. And it wasn’t even with sex in mind but simply saying that there’s a bed here to crash like the kindness that was given to me a bunch of times when I was starting out. “Zine fair in town? Come crash”. Ask Liana Finck or anyone else who’s come to visit. It doesn’t mean sex. When I asked if she could keep a secret it was because I was sharing some red room pages before announcing the book and was just trying to sound cool. Tone is missing. When I said “naughty girl” it was sarcastic after she told me some simple crime or infraction she committed. The whole pile of my dms she collected to show is just awful to look at. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to offer professional favors to anybody or use my “position” (what a joke) to get into anyone’s pants. We’re all in the art game so why not introduce new friends to old friends? When I was bringing up any professional stuff to anybody it was just common ground conversation.
Then seeing these dms even further out of context on other news outlets and media sites. Matt P at the [Pittsburgh] city paper, you know what you did to skew your narrative. Fuck you. But they surely gave themselves their own plausible deniability by asking me for comments right as I’m trying not to jump off a bridge or something.
Molly Wright is a conundrum to me and her actions border criminal. He said/ she said never looks good but none of what she said happened and I can’t believe she’d be so malicious and pile on like this. Now that I’m officially checked out I think my family has a civil lawsuit and she should be held accountable. She pushed this over the edge into “multiple women” territory. It’s so corny. I absolutely never asked for a blowjob in trade for anything ever. She successfully made me look stupid and everybody accepted her word as fact. Citizens of the internet are playing such dangerous games with people’s lives. I never had anyone lined up for an open relationship with her. I never was interested in a relationship with her. We had sex twice and she initiated both times. The first time was a surprise. When we were done watching a movie or just hanging out (I don’t exactly remember the circumstances 4 years ago) she jumped on me and started kissing me, telling me how comfy I made her feel. We quit hanging out during Covid lockdown but kept in touch here and there and I thought things ended naturally. Thankfully her post including the piece about me dissing Jim Rugg , super emotional “fuck Ed Piskor” type language, and the Red Room sales stuff portray she’s a petty woman scorned. Punitive and false. My house was burning and she threw gasoline on it. There needs to be recourse for my loved ones. I’m dead. I don’t have a reason to lie. Hold Molly Wright accountable, please. Reputation destruction is her form of aggression and there were very real consequences. My lawyer is Harris Miller. Is it possible to subpoena all texts and dms I had with her?
Big titty Taff? Yeah, I would draw you naked all day and never apologize for wanting to. I like drawing tits and tattoos when I’m not drawing comics.
I’m a solitary guy and I’ve put every ounce of my time and life into my work for around the past 20 years. I never felt satisfied with my skill so I constantly worked really hard and tied it all to my identity and self worth. Every waking moment was spent working and ideally I thought it would be best to have all friends who share the same passion. It’s why I offered to introduce them to my friends. It’s like my cherished Japan trips introducing Koenji Shawn to Bryan Moss and Moss to Skeme and Skeme to Danika. I was the only person who knew everybody on the trip and by the end of it, we were all friends.
Social media was how I met people. My greatest relationship began at the end of Covid thanks to meeting on Instagram. A rocky but amazing 3 year relationship with someone who taught me true love. That said, I’m so glad we broke things off when we did so that she doesn’t get any slack. She’s way better off. Hope you’re well, Clam. I never stopped loving you. This all happened before I knew you.
Now it’s all gone. Art show evaporated. Was about to sign a $75k deal for Switchblade Shorties with Abrams, Cartoonist Kayfabe ends with Jimmy’s “shocking revelations” statement (those words hurt). 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. From the sound in everybodies voice I think we all knew this was the conclusion. Jim Rugg came to my house unsolicited and gave me a hug and told me he loves me. If you know Jimmy, you know how huge that is!
I’m sorry to my family for making such a mess (no pun intended) and for creating this hassle. I wasn’t trying to be a creep. I’m also sorry to everyone who got this note and the baggage that may or may not come with it depending on how well we knew each other.
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to survive this. Comics is beyond a profession to me. It’s everything. That might sounds sad and pathetic to some, but this culture and medium gave me the greatest joy in life.
No public statements would do. Nobody against me would be convinced. Maybe this drastic move will convince a few? Maybe it will get a couple more people to consider not joining online lynch mobs over gossip? Doubt it will have much of a blip. I’m not doing this out of guilt though, once again, it was super dumb chatting with Molly D. My intentions were never nefarious with her or anybody. Im doing it out of intense shame. We’re not built to have hundreds (maybe a few thousand?) people judging and/or harassing us at once. A private and solitary mind can’t take it.
There were so many out there waiting in the wings for something like this to emerge. Daryl Ayo Braithwait called it a kill shot. You all got your wish. You were waiting for something to blow out of proportion and it got served to you on a silver platter. Ramon Villalobos, Cam Del Rosario, JB Roe, Molly Wright, congratulations. You got your pound of flesh. Evan Dorkin, I hope skeletons from your closet get revealed someday. Alex DeCampi, may you continue to have zero success no matter how hard you continuously leverage other people’s business from your bully pulpit.
The very next morning after Molly D posted the screencaps I put my last will in testament together. Freewill.com. Great service in a pinch. These are the papers I was trying to hide from you, Jimmy, when you came by with soup. I actually found a nice lady and witnesses who notarized it and made it official on a Sunday morning. How’s that for efficiency? It’s sitting on my brown desk in the corner.
Mom, Dad, Bob, JP, and Bri, I’m sorry. Mom, dad, get this will of mine straight and move into a nice home that doesn’t have many stairs. Leave whatever you don’t use the rest of your lives to my siblings. Daddy hit me up this morning and wanted me to come home but it’s just too far gone. It was great hearing your voice today also, mama.
The shame will never go away. Please make good use of what I’ve built up and take comfort for the rest of your years. This will give my life and this tragedy of events some positive meaning.
These are the files for Switchblade Shorties. Please download it and maybe a book deal can be made for my heirs. Bob Mecoy was my agent and we were supposed to sign a $75k contract with Abrams. Maybe in death, after I explain myself, it will be something they won’t balk at. Then again, the culture is sick enough that maybe a bidding war among publishers will push the price up even higher. Bob, can you try to get my folks a sweet deal? My family can use the money. Please download these files asap while my Google drive exists but they are also on the portable hard drive in my backpack that I had with me during my final act. Don’t let the cops keep it forever. I brought my data with me so that it would be easy to find.
(Redacted)There’s a black hardcover sketchbook full of autobiographical comics on my brown desk, standing up, in the hutch next to drawing tablets, that I intended to see print when I passed away. I didn’t put anything in my will where that’s concerned but hopefully it can find a publisher and get released. It was what we were gonna do with Fantagraphics under the title “Mudfish”. I didn’t sign any paperwork on that with Fanta so Bob, maybe you can help my parents there too?
I realize that I didn’t make any notes in the will about my authored books and intellectual properties. Jim Rugg, can you maybe help make sure my people don’t get jacked by the publishers? I haven’t gotten my HHFT omnibus royalties so my family should be getting a good check soon. Can someone make sure to hold Fantagraphics accountable with my royalties and perhaps an audit of their accounting books is in order also, to see if I got all that was coming to me. Eric Reynolds gave me no benefits of doubt and I don’t know if fanta’d be tricky about my stuff in death. His suspicions of me make me suspicious of them. That’s the thing that sucks about going through this. You don’t know who your friends are.
Jimmy, can you also post our unlisted videos and make our private streams to Patreon live to the public. That’s the perception I wanna leave. A dude having fun talking comics with his brother. Please keep cartoonist Kayfabe up and monetized and share half the loot with my family each year. Maybe schedule the vids each day as we did for years until our roster is complete. Don’t dissolve the llc but split the take with my heirs.
Oh yeah, and I was avoiding the internet as much as possible, mostly relying on some friends who relayed me info here and there. I was not making/using burner sock puppet accounts to try to defend or attack. Hopefully those accounts will still tweet a bit so that you guys believe that, at least. Maybe someone can dig up ip addresses to confirm.
What a week. I wouldn’t wish this shit on my worst enemy. Leave it to me to get into trouble without ever leaving the house. I don’t have email addresses for any of my family. Please get this message to them. My phone is fully charged and it’s on so I’m sure it can be pinged and tracked by first responders. I have a battery pack case so the phone should be on for a few hours at the very least. My phone number: 412-915-4501, license plate: JFA8859 Im wearing a black hoodie. Maybe a black peacoat, black dickies, terrex continental boots.
Hey mom and dad. Liz’s rent is $675 and she just paid up through April. Let her move her man in with her if they take that step. Keep the house. It’s not too shabby and will bring in a trickle of income each month.
Anastasia James, please hook my parents up with that artwork from the show. I didn’t watch the news reports but I guess you can get their address right off the video. These represent some of my best pieces for hip hop family tree and if I salvaged my name at all they will be worth good loot on the market. Don’t sell the cover to volume 1 for anything less than $25,000
Once again, I’m guilty of being stupid. No doubt. But, that’s all. I never thought in a million years that I’d take this step but I also never in a million years thought that something so Orwellian would ever happen to me. Ya never know in this life.
I was murdered by Internet bullies. Massive amounts of them. Some of you out there absolutely contributed to my death as you were entertaining yourself with gossip. I wasn’t AI. I was a real human being. You chipped little bits of my self esteem away all week until I was vaporized. Maybe I’ll be able to haunt you dorks as a ghost. I come from Gypsy heritage and I’m definitely cursing a lot of you.
This is the calmest I’ve felt all week. It’s over for me. I’m sorry for the hurt it’ll cause my family and closest buds. I hope it makes people think twice when joining an internet feeding frenzy. There you have it. Control freak ‘til the last. Peace out.
Ps. There’s $852 in my wallet, cash, in case the Jake’s get sticky fingers and steal my shit
Eddie P
1982-2024
Piskor’s passing would later be confirmed by his sister, Justine Cleaves, who on April 1st wrote to her personal Facebook page, “It is with the most broken heart that I share my big brother, Ed, has passed away today. Please just keep our family in your prayers as this is the hardest thing we’ve ever had to go through.”
Offering his own statement on Piskor’s passing, his brother Bobby Piskor wrote to Facebook:
[Editor’s Note: As above, in the interest of avoiding undue monetization, Bobby’s words will be shared as a block of ‘quote text’.]
“I was murdered by Internet Bullies”
Words are powerful. Words are humorous. Words have meaning. Words are hurtful. Words are damning.
“I was murdered by Internet Bullies.” That is powerful. The fact is that my brother was murdered by Internet Bullies. People found the humor to speak about a series of untruths, fictitious excerpts that glorified a certain narrative. The words you all wrote, that made you all so very proud, had a lot of meaning to my brother. In his eyes, he let his family down. When it fact; the Internet Bullies let HIM down.These words hurt. They hurt so many people. The Piskor family is large. It has a reach that goes beyond the world of Comics. How do you tell my 10 year old daughter that her favorite person won’t get to finish their sketch book that they have been working on since she could hold a crayon? You robbed my niece the ability to sit on the floor and draw with my brother. You robbed my nephews the ability to play video games with him. You robbed my parents of their first born son. You robbed my family of their cousin, their brother, their uncle. You robbed the comic industry of a historian. You robbed the world of a New York Fucking Times Best Selling Author. You robbed the world of my big brother. I’ll be DAMNED if I don’t stand up and speak up about this.
“I was murdered by Internet Bullies”
These words, I will never be able to get out of my head. These words will forever be cemented all across the internet.
The internet is a dark place. People are awful. People are very opinionated. People do not understand the difference between fact or fiction.
My brother was the very first person I have ever looked up to. I wanted to be just like him. He was one of two people that I wanted to be proud of me. My brother pushed for the best. He held us to a higher standard. He taught me so much. That you put your nose to the ground, work hard, when you feel like you’re working too much, you work even harder. The grind never stops.
I will never find anyone who can match his work ethic, and his dedication to his craft.
Yesterday was the literal hardest day of my life and I am living in a terrible nightmare.
Eddie, I am sorry that the world failed you.
WE ALL LOVE YOU
THE WORLD LOVES YOU
I am sorry you were alone. But your legacy will live on forever.
I love you Big Bro
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