Hip Hop Family Tree

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop broadway musical Hamilton is one of the biggest crossover success stories in recent memory, and everyone’s going crazy for its stunning music, compelling narrative, and diverse cast. The musical is about the rise of founding father Alexander Hamilton, from impoverished immigrant, to George Washington’s right hand man, to his downfall following America’s first major sex scandal. If you’ve spun that record a million times already --- or, I guess, streamed it on Spotify a bunch --- and you’re still not satisfied, we’ve got five of the best independent comics that can meet your cravings for more great entertainment in the Hamilton mold.

The Humble Bundle's biweekly book sales have become a bit of a risky proposition for people on the lookout for cheap comics. On the one hand, you can get a whole bunch of stuff for whatever price you want to pay, with more content unlocked at a still-pretty-low price of $15, and you get to support a charity while you're at it. On the other hand, sometimes you end up reading a bunch of Transformers comics for the next six months. Really, though, it's almost always worth looking into, and the bundle that launched this week is no exception. The theme is comics based on music, and for $15, you can grab the first volume of The Wicked + The Divine, Phonogram, Nowhere Men, Hip Hop Family Tree, and more.

The 27th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards took place at the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront San Diego on Friday night, and it was a great night for diversity, for women in comics, for comics aimed at a younger audience, and for the future of the industry.

Ed Piskor's Hip-Hop Family Tree, the ongoing hip-hop-history series from Fantagraphics that has til now come out on an irregular schedule, will this August become the first monthly series published by the company. Both written and drawn by Piskor, each volume of the series has traced a few years in the history of hi-hop, covering the rise of performers including Run DMC and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Graphic novelist Ed Piskor grew up in Pittsburgh at the intersection of hip-hop and comics. That's one of the takeaways from the mini-documentary that accompanied a recent profile of the Hip-Hop Family Tree creator in Pittsburgh Magazine. In it, Piskor visits his childhood home -- now totally dilapidated and overgrown -- and finds his old sketches on the walls. He talks about the playgrounds nearby where hip-hop found a footing in Pittsburgh, and visits the comic shop that helped launch his career.

Start your week off right with today's links.

Ed Piskor has been having a good year. His hacker culture graphic novel telling the story of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, Wizzywig, was nominated for an Eisner Award for the cartoonist's distinctive book design, and was recently translated into a handsome French-language edition from Dargaud. Piskor also became the second recipient of the Columbus Museum of Art and Thurber House 2013 Gra