Deep Roots For The Hip Hop Family Tree

In case you haven’t noticed, The New York Times best-selling book series Hip Hop Family Tree is now making its debut as a monthly comic book with new covers, splash pages, and a “director’s commentary” by Ed Piskor which traces the creator’s motivations, processes, and research involved in making the book.

Hip Hop Family Tree #1 (JUN151310) will be the first monthly comic book from Fantagraphics’ in its 39-year history as a publisher. The first issue of the comic traces the very beginning of hip-hop, and draws attention to breakdancers, graffiti artists, DJs, and MCs who formed hip-hop culture in the tenement rec rooms of the south Bronx in the 1970s. If you’ve ever been curious about who coined the term “Hip-Hop,” its time you got educated about cultural pioneers like Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, who actually make appearances in the book!

Creator Ed Piskor plans to serve up the most thorough account of the who, what, where, and when of the hip hop genre, and explains  “We’ve found that the existing treasury editions are most popular through the book trade and we thought it would interesting to make an effort to do some outreach with the direct comic shop reader. Our Free Comic Book Day editions were highly sought after at the comic shops who carried it, and we took this as a good sign to try some unprecedented moves.”

“If you would have told me a year ago that we were going to publish a monthly comic book for the first time ever, with variant covers no less, I would have made a face,” says Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds. “But Ed is a singular talent, and Hip Hop Family Tree has proven to be a singular property. When Ed first floated the idea of a comic book series, we jumped. I knew he could pull it off in the way that few ever could.”

Hip Hop Family Tree #1 (JUN151310) is in comic shops August 19.