Award-Winning 'X-Men' Artist Commits Suicide After Being Cancelled Over Unconfirmed Sexual Misconduct Allegations
CORRECTION, April 5, 2024: Ed Piskor hosted “Cartoonist Kayfabe.” An earlier version of this article had a different name for the podcast.
An award-winning comic artist who worked on Marvel’s “X-Men” series committed suicide after being hit with unconfirmed sexual misconduct allegations, reports indicate.
Ed Piskor, who won the Eisner Award for his “Hip Hop Family Tree” series and hosted the “Cartoonist Kayfabe” podcast, died at 41, according to Comicbook.com.
The passing was confirmed by a Facebook post by the artist’s sister.
“It is with the most broken heart that I share my big brother, Ed, has passed away today,” Justine Cleaves posted on Facebook Monday.
“Please just keep our family in your prayers as this is the hardest thing we’ve ever had to go through.”
Piskor, whose best-known mainstream work was on Marvel’s “X-Men: Grand Design,” had recently been the target of two separate unconfirmed social media allegations of sexual misconduct, leading to the cancelation of an art exhibit and some outlets taking the accusations as gospel truth.
The first accusation came in late March from a woman who said she engaged in direct message chats with Piskor in 2020, when she was 17 and Piskor was 38.
“Are you 17 or 18? Imma be so mad if you say 17 because this crushes me at that age,” he allegedly said in one, in which he was commenting on her artwork, according to the Pittsburgh City Paper.
In another, which involved a conversation about his home, he reportedly showed the girl a picture of a room in the house and said “you can crash there if you ever wander into my side of the state for a few days.” Both artists live in Pennsylvania.
The individual also alleged that Piskor called her “good girl” and “naughty girl” in other texts — although given the context provided, there might not necessarily be a sexual connotation to it.
“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?” Piskor is alleged to have said in the conversation, according to a screenshot provided by ComicsBeat. (The posts were initially put on Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours.)
“I wouldnt dream of it,” the girl replied, then referencing the protagonists of the Hunter Thompson novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”: “I’d prefer to be raoul duke and dr gonzo if that’s an option.”
“Good girl. You give the correct answers!!” the other conversant, allegedly Piskor, replied.
“The screenshots shared are from May of 2020, just a month before a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against comics creators like Cameron Stewart, Jason Latour, and Warren Ellis were made public,” ComicsBeat reported.
“If you thought that might’ve made Piskor think twice about his own behavior, though, that appears not to have been the case. In text that accompanies the screenshots, which you can see below, the cartoonist indicates that Piskor has continued to DM her inappropriately ‘To this DAY.’”
Evidence that Piskor was still texting her was absent from the ComicsBeat report, if it had indeed been provided in the first place.
“This is about the inappropriate nature of Ed Piskor’s communication with me. I was way younger than him and starstruck that someone ‘famous’ liked my art I was posting to essentially no-one by my friends,” the woman said in the Instagram messages.
“I am not trying to ruin anyones career or try and stay people wouldn’t reach out 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 TURNIN 18. A SENIOR IN HIGHSCHOOL!”
In the wake of that post, a second accuser — whose allegations are now deleted from X — claimed that Piskor asked for sexual favors in exchange for the phone number of his agent.
“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,” she said in the post.
On March 25, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announced the indefinite postponement of an exhibit of Piskor’s art.
“The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust learned yesterday 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,” a spokesperson said in an email. “The Trust takes the allegations very seriously and has decided to postpone the exhibition indefinitely.”
Neither Piskor nor his accusers commented on the anonymous allegations of grooming or untoward behavior after they were leveled.
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