Ed Piskor & the comics industry’s mob mentality.

The last ten days or so has thrown up the dark rotting heart of the online comics industry which ended with the suicide of Ed Piskor this week. Here’s a decent summary of what happened in the last week from of all place, the Daily Mail which itself has form for bullying, but this article covers a lot of things the comic press fails to cover for reasons which will become clear.

If you don’t want to give that site a click, the short version of what happened was that Piskor was accused of grooming a female creator when she was 17. Other women said they’d had issues with Piskor & then a number of accounts on social media (mainly on Twitter) went after Piskor while at the same time, a local TV network where Piskor lived revealed his address and doorstepped his family. In a few days Piskor went from being a successful comics creator who with Jim Rugg, ran the excellent YouTube channel Cartoonist Kayfabe, to having book deals cancelled, his home doxxed & being accused of terrible things by people online in the worst ways. Even Jim Rugg was being accused of grooming and perversion. Blood was in the water and a number of people wanted to feed.

At this point there was no police investigation as they’d said no crime had been committed, and all that’d happened was a few messages were published out of context. No due process had happened but people online took it upon themselves to cancel Piskor having taken upon themselves to be the vigilantes policing comics. If it also helped settle some grudges then even better. And this wasn’t just the Comicsgate crowd who hated Cartoonist Kayfabe as they never got covered on there, but supposed ‘progressives’. It was basically, an online mob.

Piskor in the meantime was accused of having sockpuppet accounts, and with no evidence at all accused of worse and worse things while many accounts carried on sticking the knife in. Jim Rugg eventually released a statement saying he was distancing himself from Piskor, their YouTube channel was taken down & while some people were calling for calm, there was a large vocal crowd looking to ensure Piskor had nothing left. Remember, at this point there’s no investigation by the police and yes, the court of public opinion is important yet at this point Piskor wasn’t there to make his case as the mob by now had ensured even if he was in a state where he could, it wouldn’t be heard.

Then he killed himself. He published a note on his Facebook & the letter is online should you wish to search for it, but in there he admits to being, well, a bit creepy and inappropriate but also he throws doubt on the released messages and their context & names several fans and creators who led the attacks on him. He also outlines to his family how to deal with his finances so members of his family don’t go short. It’s a tragic letter and such a waste of a life, which is especially being made clear by his family’s social media output since then that shows Piskor wasn’t the person many on social media were painting him as. There was a human being there as well as the man who loved comics to the extent it was his life.

In a fair world people would have held back, let Piskor made his case & if necessary, let the police do their job but this never happened so now a man is dead having seen his life ruined by an online mob that didn’t wait, show any humanity but instead jumped to punish someone in the worst ways.

This sadly, is far, far too common these days to the extent people have been saying for years that this comics cancel culture was going to result in a death. Now it’s happened and we’ve got most people numbed by it, yet some are desperately trying to use his death to settle scores, or just as bad, we’re seeing people critique his suicide note or even say he did the right thing. People’s narcissism & self-righteousness knows no bounds. I guarantee few lessons will be learned from this & by the end of the year, or sooner, we’ll have another case in comics where someone is cancelled and people fear we’ll see another Piskor.

‘But cancel culture is consequence culture’ you might say and I’d ask who the hell put you in charge? It’s one thing to react after criminal convictions or full evidential proof, and it’s another to jump on online rumours to ruin someone because (and let’s be blunt here) they enjoy it and see themselves as the arbiters of public opinion. There’s a thin line between a genuine reaction to something that’s been proven to have happened and the mob mentality that gets off on seeing someone suffer, especially someone people have an issue with for the slightest of reasons.

Here’s another example of it only a few people know. Around a decade ago a small group of fans were trying to get A Major Comics Writer cancelled, and in the process take A Well Known Fan/Writer with him. There was also an attempt to sell the story to a major UK daily newspaper but thankfully they were so crap at it, plus all their plans were exposed as it was happening that it resulted in one of them wrecking their career and another eventually ended up being cancelled himself when #metoo started. There’s more stories like this in the world of comics normally swapped in the wee hours of the morning in a bar where few people are still sober or awake enough to share them. Even before social media there’s examples of creators trying to get others sacked so they can get their jobs, or fans acting in ways that in retrospect, should have seen them in front of a judge.

The majority of people in the comics industry are ordinary people. Some are nice, some are iffy, most are just plain ordinary people with a love of comics who want to do well. A core aren’t. They’re the worst people in the world & any perceived or actual power they have, especially in cases like Piskor where they can get ‘revenge’ for whatever it is about the person they hate, the better. I’m not naming specific names as in one reads Piskor’s letter these people are named, plus it seems possible a civil court case may well happen though I’m unsure of the laws in Piskor’s state. In the UK, there would have been an inquiry so I find it odd looking in that the same thing isn’t happening there.

The warnings were there & the same people have been involved in many cancellations, not to mention just plain, ordinary online bullying for years. People have suffered incredible amounts of bullying having committed no crime, or even an accusation. They’ve just been attacked by these people for reasons like politics, jealousy or just plain old bullying of the type you’d see in school.

So people are rightfully angry. Maybe this is a point where things change. Perhaps it will to an extent, but the damage is done & those people who led the mob will probably just carry on. A life has been lost and others ruined all for what? Internet likes? Ego boosting? A sense of self-righteous fury? Certainly not justice or kindness or even trying to help Piskor as some have pretended they were really trying to do when they’d helped ruin his life.

It’s a shite situation & people are going to take a long time to deal with this.