Wizzywig

Piskor’s saga of Kevin Boingthump Phenicle, an invented character gene-spliced from various real-life hackers, began as a series of self-published books, was serialized online, and is now a graphic novel handsomely packaged with a Mac Classic cover and Apple-fied Top Shelf logo. In fractured, single-page strips and longer, stretched-out scenes, Boingthump begins as a clever adolescent in the ’70s with a knack for tinkering just below the surface of legality and an insatiable curiosity for new technology (he’s more that lost breed of dissidence, the phone phreaker, than the sort of hacker we associate with the term today). Without much malicious intent, though, he winds up on the FBI’s hit list, goes into hiding when a hysterical Geraldo type whips the public into a fear frenzy, and inspires a backlash among underground figures waging a battle for digital freedom. Piskor’s accomplished, alt-comics-style art will be familiar from his collaborations with Harvey Pekar. Like Pekar’s work, this solo outing is a story of endearing subversiveness, exposing the forgotten marginalia of society. --Ian Chipman