hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0018.txt

Episode: 18
Title: HPR0018: An Interview with Ed Piskor
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0018/hpr0018.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:23:46

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So
Hello everybody and welcome to Hacker Public Radio, the suspect dog with you on this
episode.
And today we actually have a very special guest on the show, somebody who, if you read
the banner at forums, you might have seen him enter recently and talk about a project
that he's working on, Ed Piscore is joining the show with today.
And we're going to talk about his latest book, his latest graphic novel called Lizzy Wig,
the One Freak, which is a graphic novel about, well actually I guess we'll go into what
it's about in a few seconds, but first of all, Ed, thank you for being on the show.
Thanks for having me, thanks, real good to talk to you, Ed.
Alright, so, first impressions of the book, alright, you ready for this?
I'm here.
Alright, so, first of all, thank you for sending me the copy, I appreciate it.
It was weird, first of all, there's a weird backstory here that you and I know that I guess
we could share is I was traveling a lot during this, when you sent me this book and I
wasn't able to get my hands on it, I was looking forward to reading it through the holidays,
I came back and I couldn't get into my PO box because I really wanted to read this
on the flight I had coming up, I flew out to San Diego, shots just to Sevant and the
guys out in San Diego, generic, and I was looking forward to reading it on the plane, however,
the post office was closed because it was the 31st and the first for the only two days
that I was home, so when I tried to go was a Sunday and a holiday, so I couldn't get
the stupid thing, so I didn't get the reading on the plane, but I did get it when I got
back, and very excited, the first thing I did was flip the book over, first of all, let's
talk the size of the book, now what are the dimensions here?
It's like a seven and a half inch square, so seven and a half inches all around.
Perfect square, so first thing I did, I picked up the book, nice glossy cover, I was
impressed that I wasn't sure what to expect if this was going to be stapled together quite
honestly, I wasn't expecting this, it came in great shape, I'm very impressed, it's bound
very well, I'm a little bit anal about my books too, I'm one of those guys that
I can't stand people who bend the front cover back around the book while they're reading
it, oh man that bug's that army for some reason, that's a book, I know what you're talking
about man, I know what you're talking about, I hate where people fit in front of me and
they take a look at my club, they can then just manipulate it all weird and roll it up
and put it in their pocket and it just makes you want to cry man, it worked hard on this
stuff, you know?
That's a book man, you can't do that, that's like, I don't know, sacrilege or something,
I just can't do that to books and anyway, so mine is still even though I've read the whole
thing, the spine is still perfect, no cracks, no creases, so I will keep it in that condition
I hope, so the first thing I did I felt, pick it up my hands, I was impressed, it was
good binding, I was surprised at that, so if anybody's wondering about ordering something
online like that and wondering how it comes, it does come just you could buy this off
the shelf in any bookstore, and actually is this available in bookstores at all or is
it only online?
No, just distributing it myself, right, like with you, if you get in touch with a distributor
to pick up your stuff I mean, they just, like you end up losing money just by shipping
it to them and stuff like that, so I'm just handling it on my own.
Exactly, we found the same exact thing with our magazine, you have to front all the
shipping to get it to them and then there's such a delay in getting the sales numbers
back and getting paid for it, and then whatever they don't sell they don't pay you for, and
it's such, it's so hard to get into that market or into that distribution line, so I totally
understand what you're saying.
Yeah, in comics there's a monopoly, when it comes to distribution, this company called
Diamond, and since they're a monopoly, they can command that you give them, I think
it's 60% off to carry the book, and I mean, with each copy you're losing a lot of money,
that's crazy, so I think my audience is extravagant enough to find the book in the internet
the perfect way of distribution, but people talk about it, if they want it they'll find
it.
And that's the same thing with us, but also to throw in there, this is something that
the printed medium is, I love the printed medium, there's other ways of distributing online
and stuff, but I like the printed medium, it's somethings are just designed to work well
for it, and I think this is one of them.
There's a whole movement of web comics out there, and I don't know, there's just something
about looking at a screen, I like something tangible that you can kick back on the couch
and just, you know, step away from the computer for a second and, like, decompress.
Yeah, and they're out in a recliner or something.
Some things work better online, some things work better printed, it's just the nature
of it, and I think this is definitely something, I don't think I would like reading this online
as much as I do, having it printed.
So yeah, I saw the same way in there.
Yeah, so I think it also, first of all, I'm impressed with the printing and the way
this thing is put together, that I wasn't expecting, so that ended up being pretty good.
I didn't know if you were going to staple this out of your house and send it to me or what.
So nice glossy cover, nice thick card stock cover, and even the interior paper, see,
there's a lot in your artistic style, and we probably will come back to this later,
but in your artistic style, there's a lot of shading and colors, and you're not afraid
to make dark backgrounds and shadows and things like that to help offset it.
So nice thick paper inside, so it doesn't lead through to the other side, which is very
in something that I learned in doing the magazine that you have to be careful with.
Yeah, absolutely.
Now, here's the first thing that made me say, uh-oh, wait a minute, flip it over to the back,
and on the back cover is a big, free, Kevin's thumper sticker, basically.
And I immediately thought to myself, oh no, this is going to be the Kevin Mittening story
again, we're going to hear the poor Kevin, Kevin got this, Kevin got that.
Well, and I began flipping through the pages.
First of all, the artwork was very interesting, and again, wasn't sure what to expect.
So I flipped through it, of course, it immediately looked interesting.
I'm going to go back to the page, you want to start reading.
First of all, thanks for the introduction, nice first page, you sent me.
I appreciate that.
Started reading it immediately, and I was kind of half reading it to be honest,
sitting in front of the TV, I just got home, I was trying to watch the news,
and picked this up and half reading it, and I found it about four pages into it.
I had to turn the TV off and concentrate on the book.
So you did a good job of engaging me within the first few pages.
And that's a big obstacle.
Yeah, that's a big obstacle overcome, I think, in most readers.
Americans sadly have a short attention span.
I don't think I'm as bad as most, but I guess I probably have my moments.
And first page, of course, the title, the first frame says,
The Mythology of Boynthump, aka Kevin Fennical Jr.
So there's the Kevin from the back.
So it obviously does have some relation to the free Kevin movement,
for obvious reasons, but this is not a book,
true or false, this is not a book about Kevin Midnick.
Yeah, it's definitely not a book about Kevin Midnick per se, though.
Somebody who knows the story of Midnick might recognize some scenarios and situations
that this character gets himself into every now and again.
Right, now is there, okay?
First of all, Kevin is good because,
not only you got Kevin Midnick, Kevin Poulson, you've got just the name Kevin,
for I don't know, weird reason seems like after name, because of them,
I guess because of some of the big names historically.
Is there any other significance to the Kevin J. Fennical Jr?
They're kind of, it doesn't have much to do with actor lore, so much as it does,
so much as it has to do with just my personal life.
I have a friend named Kevin.
He's in the computers, and he's very tech savvy.
His name is Kevin.
And the last name that you don't need to know.
And I worked with the guy in this real shitty call center here in Pittsburgh.
And the people were so in that that in the computer system where they sort of
had his name stored, they misspelled it.
They called him Kevin Fennical, so he was so pissed off about that.
And whenever I would call him Kevin Fennical,
he would screw up my name and we would just like make fun of each other
with calling each other retarded names and stuff.
Yeah, that's a great story.
It's just my way to get people to say Kevin Fennical over public airway and anywhere else.
One day we're going to cross in real life at a con or something like that.
You've got a point to him and I'll walk up and say, hey, you're Kevin Fennical.
Easy to do, man.
The point's up monitor.
Well, I was going to bring that up later in the show when I started breaking it down.
But yeah, the point's thump, first of all Michael, that's kind of unique.
I've never heard that.
It's a very, it's very onomatopoeia.
It's kind of like a point thump.
And then as I started reading, it actually some page 23.
I'm flipping to it right now.
Where in the book, there's a backstory of how he picked up the handle.
And I didn't get it.
I'm like, wait a minute.
That's, I don't get the punchline of this joke on page 23.
I'm like, well, I'm not quite getting that one.
You know, it's probably, it's probably a little bit inside.
And in the book, I just kind of chalked it up just a stoner humor.
I'm like, this guy's just stoned because I don't get that at all.
I'm not sure what that's about.
So, but anyway, okay.
So again, I'm worried that this is going to be another free Kevin book.
Or is he either going to be about Kevin?
And he's the main character, Kevin Mittnik, that is, which is not true.
Or it's going to be a book where the main character worships Kevin Mittnik.
It's going to tell us about all the injustices and stuff against Kevin Mittnik.
Now, not to dismiss them or put them down, it's just been done to death.
So, I was happy to read a few pages in that that is absolutely clearly not the case here.
Like I said, you did reference some things, some stories that may be tighter, some,
what is urban legends or myths or whatever you want to call it that may or may not have
been attributed to Kevin or other people in there.
You did a good job of mixing some real stories or, I guess, is that a,
is that not to be more on real stories?
Real, no, I guess there are real stories and some mythology and some,
I heard that he could do this and I heard he could, there was a reference in here about
whistling into the phone, you know, which was the point.
Yeah, that was one that's been told.
There were references like that in there.
Well, actually, let's back up and kind of go through the book.
But back to the opening of the book, the introduction here is,
you've got to main character that we've immediately realized is not Kevin Mittnik,
because you say Kevin Fennicle's doing it on the first panel.
And then like the first two or three pages are, I don't know what I call an interview pages,
basically people saying, oh, yeah, I know that guy.
This is what he's like.
And you get all these different viewpoints from all these different types of people.
And it, they're so varied that it is exactly like some of the myths and stories that
get spread around.
You know, people from the old, there's probably so many people that have said so many stories
about all these old hackers and probably only certain percentage of them are true.
Some of them are true that no one's ever thought were true.
I mean, it's good that you're creating a mythology off the character to start with.
Even though he's completely fictional, you're creating a mythology,
so it's kind of accurate.
And then, yeah, and then by page 12, this is where you really get to the narrative, I guess,
of the story, your main plot device, I guess would be Winston Smith as the name of the character
on a radio show called Off the Rocker.
Now, I do think that majority of our listeners,
the majority of our hacker listeners, will realize that that's a playoff of Off the Hook,
the TV show out of New York, 2600 radio show Off the Hook, and or Off the Wall, both shows
from Emanuel Goldstein.
And there's also a double reference there because Winston Smith and Emanuel Goldstein
both characters from 1984 by George Orwell.
Right.
So a lot of well-read hackers would have gotten that.
Quite a few probably didn't, to be honest.
I think so many of the forums didn't get the reference.
And I explained who Winston Smith.
Because I think they asked when you put up the sample pages on there.
And I had to say, right, man, that's 1984, man, you got to respect George Orwell here.
I guess I'm not that clever, man.
The narrator here, and it's not throughout the entire thing,
but he comes in when it's necessary to further the plot and to fill in some gaps
of the story, is Winston Smith hosting a radio show going out of the airways talking about
Kevin, aka Boinkthump here, in the present day, a radio show that you're listening to,
while the rest of the book is kind of talking about a young Boinkthump growing up,
and even getting the handle by, like I said, this early is page 23, was it, I said earlier?
Yeah, yeah, and we're on.
Yeah, so it's the story that you're watching the main character is when he was younger,
but every once in a while you'll come in with a, I don't know, a flash forward or a present day
narrative explaining what's going on to the main character as, I guess, I can't say real life,
but in the now.
Right, so in the present time context of the story, I guess.
There you go, see, you tell it better, I can't think of the proper term, the words here,
but the majority of it is following the adventures of this young guy.
First of all, okay, so the name we talked about, the other thing I got to ask you,
the other thing that jumps out of me within a couple of pages, and even on the cover,
but what I once I started reading is I suddenly found myself going, damn, homeboy has got a
throw, man, dude, it's got some hair. This guy has got a hair, I mean, that's, that is some hair,
man. That's like, you know, it's almost like a trademark of the character, I mean,
at first I'm like, man, what is this dude doing with the hair, and then kind of towards the end,
it's like, it fits him, it's like, it worked.
You know what I sort of lifted that from, was this kind of legendary picture of Kevin
Poulson, where he's sitting on, he's sitting on this table, and there are like a million rotary
phones all around him, and some like old payphones around him in the picture. He's got like this
mad 80s hair, man. I had to exaggerate a little bit for my own use, but that was kind of the
inspiration and just that ugly as 1970s 80s hairstyle. Exactly, exactly. And you know, that's
another thing, I guess we can talk about now too, is that you did a good job in keeping everything
in the proper timeframe. Like one thing I do is I'm a very critical reader for loop holes and
mistakes and things like that. You know, I'm the guy that watches a movie and says, dude, there's no
way he can do that with a cell phone because they hadn't invented that technology yet. I'm that guy.
So when I read this and I was looking for stuff like that, not because I wanted to pick it apart,
but just because it's what I do, and I got to say I didn't find a single one. I didn't find anything.
I was even looking at silly stuff, but you're going to laugh at this, but this is again, I guess
me being a weird hacker or just a weird nerd in general, but even like some of the background scenes,
you would have a car and I'm thinking, okay, what year was that model car started because I don't
know if it was invented yet. Like little weird stuff like that I look for. I couldn't catch anything
in the head book, so you should feel very proud of that. Thanks a lot, man. Like I did a lot of
research to try to make it as accurate as time as possible, but also to tell you the truth,
you know, when you're dealing with the highest form of technology that we're really playing around
with in this issue is a telephone, then you're not going to see too many discrepancies when it comes to
when it comes to different models or something like that. Like when we start getting into computers,
that's probably where I'm going to get an email from you telling me how I screwed up for something like that.
Well, and actually I admit I'm not a big phone freak. I've learned a whole lot from the guys in
the forums, all of them in dual parallel and blackgrass and all those guys, but I am not a phone
freak, but I do know that a lot of our listeners will be able to identify and tell you,
I can't tell you what model phone this is that you use. I don't know if you use,
did you go to a phone booth and use it as a reference so that you drew it to make it
match a certain type of pay phone because there are guys, there are phone freaks out there that
can tell you, oh, the phone that you drew in this picture, what didn't come in to play until 1994
or something. So you may still get caught, it's just I didn't get you on that one. I don't know what
phone you use. Did you go to a pay phone for reference? No, I'm just using Google image search,
man. It's like a cartoonist's best friend when it comes to that sort of thing, but I'm not going
to point it out, so I should shoot myself in the flip, but there's a phone or two in there
that I really screwed up on and you know, it was only upon refreshing that I'm like,
what year is this story taking place? And I'm like, oh, damn it, I screwed up.
Well, I didn't want to point it out. Some of the phone freaks might. On the front cover,
the one that that that he's looking at the front cover has a rotary dial on it.
Right. Whereas all the rest interior have the touchstones.
Well, see, you pointed it out. Like, the, the, well, not all of them. Yeah, I'm stuck in there when
it has, it has the touchstones and I'm pretty, well, put it this way. If they were around,
that's not what I wanted. You know, I just screwed up, but if you look further,
I do see it into the book like, can you see a paper? They all have the rotary.
Yeah, exactly. I'm looking at the one with the two steves and they are using one of the
paper and it has rotary. That you got me then. Ah, there we go. Well, that's minor though. You can,
that's not necessarily bad. I mean, that's just like my anal retentiveness, but that doesn't,
I don't think that's that's minor. If anything, that just varies the art to make it different.
I mean, that's an artistic choice. That's no big deal either.
I'm the same kind of way though. I'm very analytical and, you know, I've, I, we're sort of
kindred spirits in this way, man, and, and, you know, I try to be a stickler for decals. So,
I consider that little section just like a wad.
All right, so let's see. So as we go throughout the story, now, I don't want to give away the
complete story or anything, but the, the short version as we follow the life of
Kevin, aka, Wayne Sump, throughout his younger years, mostly messing with the phone system,
but there's a lot of other things. There's some dumpster diving in there. There is some
block picking. There's a lot of other things and they're not forced. They're very natural.
There's some other hacker references worth mentioning in here. Like, okay, we mentioned
free cabin earlier, and there's a lot of Midnick references scattered throughout, like some of
the things that he did or allegedly did, et cetera, that our main character here does something
very similar or the exact same thing from some of those stories. He's not Kevin Midnick, but
parts of him are in there. He's, again, an amalgam of lots of different characters.
All right, there's, there's some red boxing on these pay phones. There's quite a few
pay phones in here, so definitely a fitting title for a volume one being freak.
Red boxing, there's a mention of whistling into the phone, and our main character here has
perfect pitch. Now, I don't think Kevin's ever been accused of that, but certainly that comes from
joybubbles, right? That's where that narrates. So it's for our main character, and you don't
specifically say that, but again, hackers who know some of the history, and I don't know that a lot
of them do, would recognize that, and there's one scene where he's reading a magazine, and I think
you do put a little note to say that it's October 1971 Esquire magazine. Now, that is a very obscure
reference. Let me give you big kudos for that. That's a very obscure reference that I don't think,
I think 99% of hackers do not realize, because it's Esquire magazine. What hacker reads Esquire
magazine, but that particular issue, October 1971, of Esquire magazine, had an article on
phone freaking, and it was Captain Crunch and Joy Bubbles, aka Joe and Grecia, and there was an
article about red boxing and phone freaking in general, and stuff, and about those two guys,
mostly, and most people probably don't even realize that. That was 1971,
2600 magazine came about 1984. This is 1971, October 1971, so just to put some perspective
in some date. Look how long ago that was, so that is a very cool reference that you put in there,
and if I can take a moment, I don't want to get corny or have a weird moment of silence or
anything, but, you know, Joy Bubbles, Joe and Grecia just passed away last year, founder of the
Church of eternal childhood. So, Joy Bubbles, you will be missed from the community for sure.
And didn't you tell you had some connection to Joy Bubbles, you get knowledge from up there?
Yeah, I, you know, just with the whole thing where he sort of reverted back to childhood,
or whatever, he was a big fan of his Roger's neighborhood, and his Roger's neighborhood,
was shot here in Pittsburgh. When Mr. Roger's died, Joy Bubbles took a silver mish,
come here in Pittsburgh, because all of the shows are archived at the Pittsburgh Library,
and so he spent days listening to everything he'll show, and then he just traveled back home
to, uh, without the rest of his days. Yeah, he was an interesting character. He's an interesting guy
who loved life so much. He, he would always tell people that he was five years old.
He got to a point in his life, and he said, I'm five years old, and the next year, he's still five
years old. He'd stopped aging. He was just, I'm five years old. I'm going to keep that mindset of
enjoying life and having Joy for life, and he even legally changed his name to Joy Bubbles.
So he wouldn't even his name was a hack, because, uh, I guess in the phone book, they,
they require you to have two names for him to go along with your sub number.
So his name is Joy Bubbles, and that was it. So he was able to, uh, manipulate them in that way,
and, uh, he was also able to, like, if you, if you booked up bubbles, like, if you missed it,
it mistook his name for being his first name, Joy last name, Bubbles.
But you take a look at Bubbles, and it would say, he Joy Bubbles in parentheses,
in his local phone book. Wow, I did not know that. That is awesome.
I know what, there's this, this is great interview. Uh, it's, it's on off the
look where his name was high-rise Joe at the time, and, and, uh, he's just going through a bunch
of trick. You, you really, like, can feel his enthusiasm just coming through the speakers
when he's talking about phones and stuff like that. He, he talks about things like that.
That's good stuff. I, I did not know that. I picked up something new again.
Um, there's also a reference in here to the two Steve's, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,
their side characters in your, and your book here as well. And I like the way that you kind of
mix them into Kevin's story. I word it that way, because it is Kevin's story. Um, mixed them
into it in passing. Like, I have this kind of anonymous run-in, if you will. And actually,
Kevin kind of honed them in this thing. I won't give, I give that away completely, but that was kind
of neat that they just crossed through. Again, I, it's kind of like, um, it, it's a tough tight
rope to walk, to be honest, where you're not making all of these historical figures characters
in your book, where he just like, you know, I think we said it earlier, the forest gump,
where you just have him meet every famous person, and that's the story. That would not be as good,
I don't think. I think it's much better that you incorporated different parts of historical
figures and hacking to your fictional characters. Sometimes it's the main character. Sometimes
it's his friend. Sometimes it's people that just happen to come through his life for a
one small moment in time. This is like the knowledgeable reader would, would pick up that,
that it's Steve Jobs and Wazniak with, you know, sewing blue boxes or whatever, but I never
mentioned them really, uh, using their last names or anything like that. I just,
there's two characters named Steve. And, uh, you know, so it's just, I like to put little things in
there, um, that, that, uh, that people might pick up on and, and feel sort of, uh,
just feel sort of like, you know, they're inside baseball or something like that. We're,
where they're just like, I get this, but you probably don't or something like that.
And it's good too, because if you don't get that reference, it doesn't hurt the story. I mean,
it's two guys that interacts with it. Still further supply. But if you do get some of the,
it's like, like we kind of talked about earlier about your, your friend's name. It's kind of
in jokes, you know, it's inside jokes. So if you get those, you get that much more enjoyment out of
it. But it's certainly, even if you don't get it, you can still read it and it's still further
supply and it still works as a great story. So it's those little in jokes, which are great. And
even in that scene too, it kind of, I kind of felt like there was a little Bernie S in that part,
as far as the selling the red boxes or whatever out of the trunk of the car, selling tone dollars
or red boxes, I think they're out of the trunk. So again, without ruining that little part of the
story, I don't want to go and mess it up. But kind of felt like, again, incorporating another
figure from the ghost of hacker past, I guess. In that exact story, there's the mad hat or looking
character on the phone and he says something like, you know, we have, we have a guy in Philly who
wants to buy three of these blue boxes. Exactly. And the guy that I had in mind was totally Bernie S.
Absolutely. So yeah, you can, and you can, again, it can, it's just relevant enough to pick up the
reference. And that's what makes it great. Don't go in their face. Don't make them recognize it.
You know, those beat, you could have clearly said Steve Jobs and Steve was next suddenly walk past
and you don't just leave it vague enough to make people figure it out. So that's, you didn't
great job at that. I have to say. And I don't want to go, I said, I don't want to ruin every single
hacking reference here. There's a lot of them. And these are just a few examples. There's a couple
of other just kind of general old school references. I don't know if they're exactly hacking or whatever.
Again, I did point out that, you know, the technical reference were accurate to that time frame.
So that was really good. There was like, and this is maybe, you know, me being the old guy here,
I do remember the days where we would do the old coin on a string. In the very first
vending machines and early video games and stuff, you could do that. And it didn't even have to be
a coin in the rare. You could find some of those really cheap, low-end machines, or you could just
put a slug in there. That stuff was obviously fixed very quickly. That didn't last very long,
but it's a great legend or it may even urban legend, if you say, because it was so extremely rare.
But they they caught on to that really quickly, stopping not only the slugs that started checking
for weight and like the ridges along the edge of the quarters and stuff like that. But for the
string itself, they would put the razor blades in there. So you drop your coin in and have a
razor blade that was kind of angled down. So if you try to pull it back up, it would slice the
string and take your course. So they did put stuff to stop that in really quick, but that is
absolutely a great little reference too. And and I got to give you kudos here because you did
stump me. There was a reference in here that I did not get, okay? Until I did I read it in the back
and there were two or three pages at the very end where you do explain some of the references in
case people didn't get them. Not all of them, but quite a few that you explained. And this was one
of them and I had not heard of this or did not get it until I read the notes. It's on page 47.
And you referenced what's called the eight queens puzzle. Oh yeah, and I did not, I had never
heard of that before. I know I know I know how to play chess. I went through in high school,
I played chess and a little bit through college, but I had never heard of the eight queens puzzle.
And it is a chess puzzle, a chessboard thing. And I'll let the listener do their reference
because that's exactly what I did. When I read this book and when I saw that I went out and I
actually looked and I think Wikipedia even had an article on it, but I went out and did some
searching, found out a description. Here's what the eight queens puzzle is. I sat and thought
about it. I didn't have a chessboard handy, but visually I'm counting out squares. I'm like, okay,
well, that's the challenge. So here, here, here, and I actually figured it out in my head the
solution. And then I went back to page 47 in the book and looked and sure enough that's exactly
you have the pieces in the exact position. So that is probably one of my favorite frames. And I'm
going to come back to frames towards the end of this too, but that was very cool because I didn't
get it. And I think there's going to be something for everybody in here. Nobody I think is going to
get all of the references. There's so many of them in here and some of them are so obscure and so
passive in nature that I think there's something in here that everybody's going to look up or hear
or learn for the first time. So kudos to you for that as well. There's lots of social engineering,
also mixed in the book from the bus stop and stamping the transfer of passes, which is something
that we yes, we used to do. I'd never had the the punch method. We'll say again, I don't want to
ruin too much of the story, but that he used, but certainly silly. It's much more simple, but
all you had to do back when I would ride the city bus was have a ticket that was dated in time stamp
from within the last 24 hours. So we would just look for people at a bus stop or look in the trash,
go trashing and pull one out that somebody else threw away who wasn't transferring and walk on
away for our busing chop on there and they didn't know the difference. So that is absolutely a good
example. The pizza example, things like that that's classic old school and can work still today
probably. What else here? Well again, I want to give all the details out. I guess that there's
something in there for everybody all in all to kind of wrap up here because we're over 30 minutes.
All in all and we don't have a time so don't worry about that. We can go for however long we want
to. But I guess as a summary, the things that I want to emphasize on point out is that you had a
lot of accurate depictions and stuff in there. Even when they weren't direct references to people
or events, you did a good job also and this is the most difficult part to me. You actually captured
the essence of and the feeling of it all. And I think let me let me flip open to it. I have a
marked here on my notes page 70. Page 70 is a great example of this. And if you don't mind,
I'd like to actually just read this page on here if I can. Yeah, go ahead. I'm not worried about
that sort of thing. It is our two, our main character and his best friend Winston who again,
Winston ends up being the radio host in the future, you know, who's narrating the whole thing.
But when he was younger was, I guess, best friends. Can we say that with Kevin and the story?
So these two are talking and they're talking about party lines and talking on them and something.
And you really, I wouldn't change a single word in the way you did this. So if I can just read this,
this is from Kevin Fennical Boyntomp. This is him suddenly, I don't know if it's an epiphany or just
suddenly, well, I'll just read it. Basically, he's talking to his friend about party lines and all
of a sudden he comes through with this. He says, you know, Winston, I was thinking about the power
of communications and the puzzle of the phone system. There's so much more to it than just these
party lines. Imagine the technology behind the scenes that keeps the phone system going. I mean,
it's incredible. We take it for granted. People just think you hit a few buttons and boom,
you're magically connected. You know, the average phone call usually bounces through many different
systems that make up the whole network. They keep updating things. I'm sure Blue Boxing will
become obsolete. I can tell what we know about the network is very small. But to better understand
any of things, we can probably come up with some awesome pranks and stuff. I want to figure it out
to the point that I can hear the president fart using the phone system. I think we can make a better
tool out of the phone than anyone can imagine. And I think that really, see it captures a couple
things. First, the fascination and the appreciation. It's a word that hackers don't use a lot,
but they don't realize that they have this appreciation. It's not a word they use, but they
you do. You have an appreciation for technology. And in his speech, you get across not only that
appreciation and fascination with the system, but also the fun aspect of it. So yes, I know it's
not embarrassing at all because it shows that he's not only, he's not like a nerd focused on it
only for the technology aspect. There is certainly that factor in there, but it's also for the fun
aspect and for the challenge. And it's just so many words to describe, I guess, a hackers fascination
with technology that you can't list a bunch of adjectives. I think it works better as an emotional
exposition like that. And I think that little speech right in there was my favorite part of the
whole book. It may be corny. It may be a little bit silly, but it captured the essence of the mind
of a hacker. And I think you nailed it on the head. Thanks. Thanks so much, man. I don't know what to say.
That's that's that's the hey, thank you. That was that made the whole that was my favorite part of
the whole book. Let's see, what else? And yeah, hearing the magic and the wonder in his voice,
talking about the, and this is just volume one for the phone system. I'm sure that's going to
carry over. That's the, again, I'm not a phone freak, but I appreciate that's the way I feel about
the computer system and the interwebs, you know, these tubes carrying all the data out there,
you know, it's like, I don't know. I guess again, it's corny. I know how the interwebs work, you know,
analytically and technically how it works. But sometimes, I mean, everybody listening right now,
humor me with this for a second. Well, yeah, I want you to sit back as you listen to this. And I want
you to just for a second visualize how many people are out there right now connected to everybody else.
I mean, it's just amazing. I just, I know it's so corny, but that blows my fucking mind. I just can't
believe that here we are in an age where anybody is a click away from anybody else.
I mean, the world is instantaneously a smaller place because of the internet. It's very, very easy
to communicate with anybody and I have the same sentiment. Oh, man, you, I mean, you've got
to love technology just after. So yeah, anyway, the, the, the moral there is you captured that
essence very well. You actually, it's very genuine. You capture the innocence and someone who's
genuinely interested in the topic and in learning and thinking outside of the box, which happens.
That's only one example. There were others like that as well. So yeah, I related to that because
that's how I think about a lot of things and it just absolutely kind of spoke to me to be really
corny, I guess. So I thought that was fantastic. My favorite part of the book. One other thing that
kind of stood out to me and you probably laughed at this, but you know, Kevin's school and all,
but homeboy got his ass beat a little bit too much. And he was a bit of a punk. I mean, come on,
now we've all been around the block and a few fights here and there, but this dude got beat down
a few times. I hope he stands up for himself soon. Well, you know, you know what it is. I just
wanted the casual reader to be sort of sympathetic to the character. Yeah. So I wanted to put obstacles
in his way. I see that. I can't see that. That works. I guess that's the main reason why I did it,
but you know what to tell you? The truth is, like, now this might sound corny, but I actually like
like this character as a person. If you could leave with Allison. Right. Yeah. But when I am a
Mazikist, man, and I like to put, I like to screw with them. I just, like, it gives me pleasure to
draw and get in and kick in the nuts. I mean, it has nothing. That has nothing to do with what I
think of hackers or anything like that. It's just like, you know what, man, I think he had it too
good. He passed you pages. Yeah. He's going to get kicked in the balls right now.
Well, and you know what, his, and again, I'm not going to ruin the story, but he's he's got kind
of a rough life anyway. Family life and financial and that kind of stuff. Anyways, not coming from the,
you know, a certain type of background, I guess. So, you know, I think that's something that
people can relate to and appreciate the underdog aspect or the challenging aspect of it.
But again, he still comes up from that and he still has these gifts that make him so much more
than probably most people view the character as, you know. Right. There are anybody that exists
to that little world. Right. Now, now let's talk a little bit about the art style itself.
You have a pretty consistent format throughout the book. Four panels per page.
Is that something you consciously chose to do? Do you like that format for this particular story
or do you like that format in general or do you just think it fit well for this particular
graphic novel? I've done a few different graphic novels so far and what I hope to accomplish
with each one of them. I was almost look different from the other. So this particular story
that I wrote and drew, I wanted it to have the same sort of beat, so to speak, as an old-time
adventure comic strip like Dick Tracy or something like that that would have been in a newspaper.
Right. And those little segments are told and little four panel beats in the same way.
So that's just what I was. That's a very old-school reference. I mean, Dick Tracy,
the phantom stuff like that. That's going way back. Oh yeah. That's where I gained most of my
inspiration artistic wise. The stories are very quaint and how key if you take a look at them now.
But I just think that those people were continent like draft men and they could tell a story
in pictures like nobody else. Well, and you know, when I read it too, what jumped into my mind
is it immediately reminded me. And again, I'm an old guy, so I remember these old comics.
Like the old Arkram, Robert Kram, and not him specifically, but these old 70s keep on trucking
kind of style of artwork. I mean, it seemed very like it was influenced from that. I don't know
if it was consciously or not or if that just is your style. I mean, I don't know if this is good,
bad insult or whatever, but I mean, I think I could pluck you out of the space-time continuum,
drop you into the early 70s and you could publish this book and it would fit in with that style and
that era. So to me, that's a great thing. It's not superheroes with capes and big muscles and
everything. They have their place too. I'm not putting them down, but this today is a very good
feeling of being different than what's out today with some throwback and an homage almost
to those old 70s comics. Thanks a lot, man. You know, I gained a lot of my artistic inspiration
from a lot of those those cartoonists as well, Arkram in particular. I mean, you brought
up this name and I'm not ashamed to say that he had a huge influence because I consider that
guy the best. So, might as well still from the best, man. Yeah, well, and it's not exactly like
his style, but it's certainly reminiscent of it. You can tell there's some influence from that
era and that genre. So that's very cool. I guess here, let's kind of wrap. Well, actually,
there's one other thing I wanted to mention about the art too that you put in, you know how to say
what is it? The devil is in the details. There's a couple of other little things that I thought that
really completely rounded it out that really made it from like an A product to an A plus
product and these are the little polishes that you can put on. Things like when there is a scene
with him at a pay phone, there might be graffiti on the side of it, but for example, I saw one of
the things that was tagged on the side of the phone was the handle Cheshire Catalyst. So there's still
little references. Now, the character didn't say it, the narrator didn't reference it, there was
no reference whatsoever unless you just happen to notice it. And there are quite a few things like that,
things in the background scene, things on signs, stuff like that that you should look for and you
might pick up and recognize. So look for stuff like that as you're reading as well. It adds to the
depth of the whole thing that little bit of shine when it's all said and done. So that was a nice
little touch too. So if you ever wonder, if anybody notices those kind of little things, yes, we do.
Yeah, you know what I appreciate that so much because I sort of created the project
with people like you and my tour in the local and no references and things like that. And I
appreciate not being as soon as these sorts of things, but you know, you feel like I don't know
about you. I'm not going to speak for you, but whenever I see something and I get a reference
that I understand something that I know other people don't, it feels kind of cool, man. I feel like
it's part of the club or something. And I want it to come away with that sort of feeling,
you know, that maybe it's an okay story or something like that, but you know, at least I understood
this a little bit better than the average bear. Well, I think mission accomplished. I think
you nailed it. I think this is absolutely a great purchase. It's worth every dime. People should
definitely go pick this up. Your website, edpiscord.com, edpiscord.com. They can buy this book,
right? $15 is the first, this is the first one out, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm deep in volume two right
now. As you say, I'm not going to, I'm not going to commit you or anything, but you started it.
You don't have a time frame or any kind of things like that to talk about yet, but you have started it.
Oh, absolutely. Okay. And there's going to be, I know where everything's going and it's just a matter
like they call it pencil mileage that I have to do right now. I just have a lot of pencil mileage
ahead of me. Gotcha. Gotcha. This is one and you're working on two of four. I tell the complete
story and the next three books, the next one is at the, it is pretty clear. Excuse me, I suddenly
have the hiccups on the radio and that's got to be awful. The second book, the first book is called
Freak. The second book is called Hacker. And at the end of this book, he's getting his first home
computer so you can see the transition of the story, obviously. Volume three and we won't go into
too much detail. We'll let it speak to themselves. It's going to be called fugitive and volume four is
going to be called innate. So we're going to follow this character and his life and his trials and
tribulations, if you will. And well, that might have been literally actually his trials. But we're
going to follow this character and I got to say there is a bit of connection. I do want to see
what happens to boring thumb. I'm not sure if I can say boring thumb with a straight face ever but
I do want to see how the porn kid turns out because you know, there's a little bit of all of us
in this character. You've captured a little bit of Hacker dumb and this one guy. So the other thing
that I want to mention and you and I haven't like, I brought you on the show but I didn't tell you
any of these questions. I wanted to keep it all in prompt to kind of drop it on you but I am going
to pimp this out. I don't know if you care about this anyway. I'm going to go ahead and pimp it
out because I would love to see people not only by the book, but I noticed. So I'll kind of put
you on the spot here. I did notice that on the last page here, each panel created this individual
five by five illustration on a six by seven piece of Bristol, you do have and will sell people
the artwork from this. And for me, I'm definitely going to get a couple of these and hang in my office.
I'm not going to tell the listeners which one I'm going to wait and make sure I get them first
and get this and frame this and probably hang it here in my in my hat cave here in the
office at home. People can order those now. Do they do that on the website? Should they email you
directly for that? Working out. They should buy emails at the website and they should contact me and
let me know what they're interested in and what they would like to purchase or whatever and all
that, you know, the reason I'm selling this is just sort of like I said, there's a lot of
pencil mileage ahead on the rest of the volumes of these. And I just needed as much time as
possible to produce this stuff. And, you know, the print costs of this first volume sort of need
to be taken care of. I don't expect to be out of the rent anytime soon. I know that feeling.
So that will just help with the cost of production and things. That's good. That's good. It's
well worth it and people can contact you directly. You want to give a ballpark number or something
in case people think this is going to be cost too much for them or whatever. Sometimes.
Well, it definitely depends on like level of detail and how cool I think something is.
Right, sure. But there were certain ones that I sold for first lowest at $15. But obviously you're
not going to get a panel that has like eight characters or doing cool things for something like
that. And then the prices are based on like level of detail. Now, now that's just a curiosity
question. A, two-quart question, if you will. A, how long did it take you to draw this entire
thing start to finish and B, how long did it take you to draw one, let's say, medium complexity panel?
The whole, the whole book took me about a year. But that's not to say that I worked on it constantly
because that's just not true. I worked on, I drew a whole another book in between, in between
this book. So I got a whole bunch of this book done. I drew a whole another book sort of just
keep my head above water. And when I finished that project, I finished working on this book.
It took about a year, took some like around one Christmas to the next. And then the second
second question, how long did it take to do an average panel? I'd say about two and a half to
three hours. Wow. Yeah, I'm just, I'm very slow and I just really have to take my time.
Right. Well, I mean, you know, I think you and I were talking earlier too before we started
the show that you do take pride in the detail and you try not to make mistakes or if you do,
you'll redo it or fix it to make it right instead of pushing it out. I mean, you, you're
satisfied with every one of the pages and panels in this. Yeah, I have a, there's a pride factor.
So you can call it that complex? Yeah, there's a pride. I mean, you have a pride for this. You're,
you know, you take pride in that and that's definitely to be commended. So I don't think is anything,
I mean, please, well, means if you find a person in it, in it's each individual panel, let's point
that out. So if you do, if you already have the book, thank you for the purchase. Obviously,
I'll speak on your behalf there, but if you do want to purchase one of the individual frames
itself, it's not the entire page. It's, if you find one you like, you will say, give me, you
know, I'm interested in page number 28 panel number three, because each one of these individual
panels is what's on that five by five or actually six by seven sheet, but it's a five by five
graphic. So the page and the panel and then you'll get back to them with more details and
whatever, but, you know, for the level of detail and for an original piece like this, I think,
you know, people should be jumping out of the sheet if they can get, you know, a good panel for,
you know, 25 to 50 bucks easily, you know, I think they should be glad to pay for that and a lot more,
especially like you said, it's the level of detail is going to be a factor in there. There may be more
than that, but I think that would be great and help fund, you know, the next issue of the book and
get that printed and everything and, you know, I hate, I don't, I don't want to drop a negative
thing on you here, but I hope you end up breaking even at least when it's all said and done to get
the whole series out start to finish. I know, I do, I can't appreciate what a commitment it is to
come out of pocket to fund this kind of stuff and I have literally been there and I know exactly
what you have to shell out and, you know, be happy to break even when it gets to a certain point.
I would love to see you do a whole lot more than break even, so please buy some of the art.
Again, I'm pimping you out. You're not doing it. Don't worry, I'm pimping it for you because I
really do want people to buy some of this stuff. Great little thing to have hanging in your office.
So again, edpiscore.com, EDPISKOR.com, and any of your other work as well. And we were talking
about this because it's obviously related to hacking technology, something our audience will appreciate.
But check out some of the other stuff that you've got there as well.
Ed, thank you for being on the show. I appreciate your time. Anything that we didn't cover that you
wanted to mention, the website, of course, some of your other work people might be interested in.
Anything else that I didn't cover?
You know what, just off the bat thinking about it. I just want to let people know the
grab the book so far that if they send me an email with the word handle in the subject one,
and they let me know what their screen name or handle is. I'm going to do whatever I can to get
that into a volume two. So they might turn up as a character or they'll certainly be referred to
in some way. The name might be scrolled on a wall graffiti style. Yeah, graffiti on the
pay phone. That'd be awesome. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Go for me as well. Am I going to be in there?
What's that? Is that go for me as well? Do I get in there?
Oh, there'll be. There'll be a big stank dog somewhere in there.
Well, a dog will wander by on one of the panels with a little with a little fume stinky fumes coming
up. I don't know if there's something.
All right, man. One of the things where
Mike, I want to give a shout out to anybody who grabs the book and is supporting it and
making it possible to do volume two. So anybody that grabbed it,
talks me an email. If you want your name to be included, I could understand
how people are proprietary over the privacy. And of course I won't do it without being asked.
But you know, get in touch with me and do that. I'll be happy to include your names
somehow because for anybody that grabs it. Yeah. See, that's awesome. I mean, that's
you know, it's it's not it's part of the community. You know, this is actually, you know,
showing that it's not something that was written by an outsider. It encompasses and includes
the community. And it's the I think that's really a cool gesture on your part. I think that's
pretty awesome. So I want you to pick. Why don't you pick the email address before we go?
The email address is Winpy Rutherford at Gmail. W-I-M-P-Y or U-T-H-E-R-F-O-R-D at Gmail. And it's
easy to get to if you just go to my website. And the website is at piscord.com.
You can never say it too many times. We're going to pimp. I'm going to pimp that
get this thing out there. I want people buying this man. I'm really excited about this. I think
it's really cool project. So I appreciate spreading the word. And I have a big chunk of the story
online at the site too. So if people are just like on the fence about it, think you can't get
it out and decide if they want that they wouldn't support the print version or not. Yeah, that is
I'm glad that is a great thing to mention. Yeah, I forgot all about saying that. Absolutely,
some samples and stuff they can look out there. So that's awesome. All right. So they can
they can see probably all the other references that you talked about because you didn't run the
story because it's already out there, man. Some of it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going
to do it. Thank you once again for being on the show ed. And hey, if we we do make it to a conference
somewhere, actually, these I think these would sell like hotcakes at one of the conferences. Take
these to Defcon in July. I think it is or August or whenever it is this year. Something like that.
If I have a table or something, I'll gladly give you space. Or if we can work you in somewhere.
We'll see what we can do to make this happen. And we'll talk offline about some other projects.
But thank you for being on the show. That's going to do it for this episode of Hacker Public
Radio. So everybody tune in tomorrow for another episode. Unless it's Friday, then I guess
there probably won't be one till Monday. But tune in for another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. HPR is sponsored by caro.net.
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