Hip Hop Family Tree: The Omnibus

Hip Hop Family Tree #1-4

by Ed Piskor

Discover the history of hip hop in graphic novel form ― this omnibus collection of the New York Times best-selling series includes over 140 pages of extras in a deluxe hardcover for the first time! Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree has been a global phenomenon and perennial bestseller since the first (of four) volumes was published in 2013, spawning multiple printings, fourteen comic books, and the author’s wildly popular YouTube comics channel, Cartoonist Kayfabe (with fellow cartoonist Jim Rugg). Yet the series has never been collected under one cover. Until now. This omnibus collection includes the original 360-page series with over 140 pages of extra material: a cover gallery of every HHFT book and comic book cover and back cover Piskor ever created, pages from the HHFT comic book series that have never been collected, new annotations of the entire series by Piskor, and much more. Plus a foreword by Charlie Ahearn and an afterword by Bill Adler. Hip Hop Family Tree is the entertaining, encyclopedic history of the formative years of the music genre that changed global culture. Piskor’s cartooning crackles like Kirby and takes you from the parks and rec rooms of the South Bronx to the night clubs, recording studios, and radio stations where the scene started to boom, capturing the flavor of late 1970s New York City in panels bursting with obsessively authentic detail. With a vigorous and engaging Ken Burns-meets-Stan Lee approach, the battles and rivalries, the technical innovations, the triumphs and failures are all thoroughly researched and lovingly depicted. Like the acclaimed hip hop documentaries Style Wars and Scratch , Hip Hop Family Tree is an essential cultural chronicle and a must for hip hop fans, pop-culture addicts, and anyone who wants to know how it went down back in the day. Full-color illustrations throughout

Genres: Music, Comics, History, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels, Hip Hop

504 pages, Hardcover

Published October 17, 2023

About the author

Ed Piskor had been cartooning professionally in print form since 2005, starting off drawing American Splendor comics written by Harvey Pekar. The duo continued working together on 2 graphic novels, Macedonia, and The Beats. Ed began self publishing Wizzywig after developing a huge interest in the history of Hacking and Phone Phreaking. 3 volumes, making up 3/4 of the full story, have been published to date.

Recently Ed had designed the characters for the new Adult Swim series, Mongo Wrestling Alliance.

Reviews

[Rumi Bossche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ed Piskor's HipHop Family Tree omnibus.

2024 is a stellar year for Hiphop, lots of great releases, a beef that went worldwide, and legends and young guns with new great albums. In Piskor's Hiphop Family tree we see the beginning of Hiphop in 1973 until 1985. We see the beginning of Run DMC, Africa Bambataa, Slick Rick, the Beasty Boys and Grandmaster Flash and many more. The influence guys like Rick Rubin had, and how many things and events happenend in such a short time. This is a big fat love letter to the early days, of a culture and a genre that i love dearly.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most insightful and informative way to learn hip hop history. I loved every page and learned so much about hip hops deep and complex history. I loved the extra information in the back and cover gallery. It really makes this edition worth collecting.

[Adam Howells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rest in beats, Eddie P.

[zoddicus · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I am little conflicted about this one. The actual reading experience was good, I liked the presentation style, and not being particularly familiar with the early development of hip hop it was interesting to see how some of the names I am vaguely familiar fit together. The narrative is a touch janky, because it is pretty strict about presenting things in chronological order, so jumps around a lot. In the initial serialized web version this was probably less of an issue since it was clearer where the divides between chunks were, but when reading it one big volume it sometimes just feels like you missed a page cause we are now talking about someone new.

It is fundamentally incomplete, it just stops dead around '85-'86 and the author notes make it clear the intent was to finish/write more, so there is a number of threads that get started but don't get developed/concluded.

So fundamentally I enjoyed the reading experience for all of the jank and it being in a giant tome format. But sitting thinking about it afterwards I realized/noticed some things.

It is very NYC orientated starting in the late 70s. It does touch a bit on things like the Philadelphia and LA scenes but always in terms of how NYC influenced them. Maybe if the story had been completed there would have been more development of other non-NYC scenes because they developed chronologically later, but it really feels like there was a bias to NYC and things happening outside of there were outright omitted and any influence on NYC was downplayed.

Additionally it feels like a pretty lionized version of history, like some of the seedier elements of the culture are touched on, but always as something going on in periphery and not really involving the main characters unless for example one of them died due to drug related issues. There is some touching on the incredibly destructive impact crack cocaine had on LA, but similar issues in NYC are kinda ignored or brushed away. Everyone is doing coke and drinking hard all the time, without any consequence. Again this might be an issue of the story getting cut short, but there isn't really any foreshadowing narratively that some of these things would become an issue later. Or the fact that some peoples' artistic output may have declined less due to shifting trends and more due to substance abuse or other problems. Basically if the life of the character doesn't fit well with the specific persona that they are going to be depicted as having it is omitted, so the people tend to feel flat.

And now unfortunately I need to talk about the author. I was not familiar with controversy
around Ed Piskor when I was reading this, and only really looked into him to understand why the book kinda stops dead. I have not put a lot of research into it, nor do I care to, but my broad understanding is that he was accused of sexually exploiting at least two minors for industry favours, along with a history of other complaints about his behaviour, which led to a situation that resulted in him killing himself.

With that cloud of specific accusations around the author, the fact that he omits from the story that a number of the main characters during the time period covered were engaging in activities related to sexually abusing minors that would have been publicly known when he was writing the comic leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It is hard to ignore the fact that he chose to not discuss some of his heroes' crimes that he was then later similarly accused of.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great detailed look of early hip hop history. I absolutely love the art and the meticulous attention to detail with the history and characters portrayed here. Sometimes it was hard to follow what was happening between the jump cuts, but it doesn't detract much from the overall picture that Ed portrays.

[Chris Barsanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reviewed for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune .

[Roeliox · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 ⭐

[David Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this.

[Jeffrey Babbitt]

Def! So good! Great storytelling, great art.