Caveat: This file was HUGE! Like, over three MB per page huge. Yo! That's just too big, so I made it smaller. It's still plenty large and looks beautiful.

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Hip-Hop Family Tree V2 1981-1983

Fantagraphics, 2014, 112 pages

Written and Illustrated by Ed Piskor

Book 2 covers the early years of 1981-1983, when Hip Hop has made a big transition from the parks and rec rooms to downtown clubs and vinyl records. The performers make moves to separate themselves from the paying customers by dressing more and more flamboyantly until a young group called RUN-DMC comes on the scene to take things back to the streets. This volume covers hits like Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock,” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” and the movie Wild Style, and introduces superstars like NWA, The Beastie Boys, Doug E Fresh, KRS One, ICE T, and early Public Enemy. Cameos by Dolemite, LL Cool J, Notorious BIG, and New Kids on the Block(?!)! Featuring an introduction by Wild Style director Charlie Ahearn.

"A young Pittsburgh bard travels back to the New York birth of rap with DJ Kool Herc and rattles off encyclopedic knowledge through dynamic, interwoven narratives of the '70s and early '80s. The feat is backed by era-appropriate art on pages yellowed with nostalgia. Dope, yo." – Washington Post

"In Ed Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree, readers get to experience the origins of rap music in a way like never before; they get to live it. They get to walk the streets of New York City, where in rented performance rooms with cobbled-together gear pioneers like DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash birthed a new art form." – Comics Alliance

"An avid lover of hip-hop music and superhero comic books from a young age, Ed Piskor has combined his two passions to create a remarkable reading experience…Hip Hop Family Tree imagines real-world events through the filter of 1980s Marvel Comics, bringing hip-hop visionaries to the page in a style that exaggerates their energy and style to capture the intensity of the music without having the beats." – AV Club

"The amount of research and history Piskor packs into this book is mind boggling." – Huffington Post

"Piskor is obviously a huge rap fan…He presents the facts in a nostalgic, faded-ink and rubbery realism of '70s Marvel Comics style, turning rap's early innovators into larger-than-life heroes of history." – Spin

"Piskor has an aficionado’s eye for details and connections." – New York Times Book Review

"Captures the personalities, imagery and milestones with a hilarity and efficiency that no other medium could." – Billboard Magazine

"In Piskor's comics, the…lyrics breakdance off the page…the print version is beautiful, with faux-yellowed pages, a muted color palette and an oversized 'treasury' format recalling its subject's era. Piskor's art falls somewhere between R. Crumb's blues portraits and Joe Sacco's journalism comics." – Chicago Tribune

"These comics [are] almost too good to be true…If you're a lover of hip hop and / or graphic novels, these are a must!" – Burlesque Design

"…[A]mazing…if I was going to itemize everything that was good and successful about it, I wouldn't even know where to begin. It's fantastic in so many different ways. I was predisposed to like it and it has exceeded my expectations…I'm starting to have this growing conviction that Ed Piskor just may be the greatest thing to hit comics since Robert Crumb." – Kim Deitch

"Imagining the early days of the hip-hop movement with writing and art that intentionally evoke the bombast and energy of an early ’80s Marvel comic, Piskor has introduced scores of music fans to comics by serializing the series for free on Boing Boing, but these stories look even better in Fantagraphics’ printed collections." – Hero Complex/LA Times