Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker is Ed Piskor's first graphic novel, published by Top Shelf in 2012. I've had it on my Kindle Fire for awhile from one of the Humble Bundles, and my three-day weekend is a good time to finally crack it open (virtually). It tells the story of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, a legendary computer hacker from the early days of computing. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is the obvious reference point, but only in general terms (Piskor has fun depicting Boingthump's interactions with Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak).
The story shifts between past biography and present media commentary. So we learn early on that the protagonist will wind up in prison, while also seeing him learn about computers and become a hacker. Visually it's drawn in a black and white cartoon style in the underground comix tradition.
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But is it good? :)
Haven't finished it yet! I read more this morning, but I didn't have time to write about it, so I thought I'd just wait until tomorrow when I should get to the end.
OK. I think I have a preview of it somewhere around here, too.
It's a fun book, especially if you have any history with hacker culture. It goes all the way back to phone hacking and dial-up modems, and the days when hackers were often portrayed as a public menace in the mass media. It has a strong reality base, although no real-life hackers went through quite as much as the protagonist does here, at least as far as I know.
It also helps to have a history with underground comix, because it's very much in that tradition. That includes the cartooning style as well as the militant anti-establishment tone much of the time. There's plenty of humor, too. Piskor puts a bunch of jokes about cartoonists in the crawl of a network broadcast he draws late in the book, for one example.