Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Ed Piskor, fantagraphics, Jim Rugg, red room

Ed Piskor's Red Room Is Fantagraphics' Best-Selling Comic In Decades

Published Mon, 10 May 2021 11:27:09 -0500

Ed Piskor of Hip-Hop Family Tree graphic novels and Marvel's X-Men: Grand Design, and the Cartoonist KayFaybe channel on YouTube is releasing Red Room, a new comic book from Fantagraphics Books described as "an ambitious, new sci-fi horror comic" that "represents a significant milestone for the cartoonist: the creation of his first creator-owned, shared universe. Red Room will debut from Fantagraphics in May with an oversized 64-page first issue."

And given the popularity of the creator, and his appeal to mainstream as well as indie readers, means that Fantagraphics is doing something very new for them. Tiered variant covers, available to retailers who order enough copies of the standard covers. Gary Groth's head must be spinning at the very idea.

Because it has also had more copies ordered than any other comic from Fantagraphics in twenty years. For the first 4 issues, Jim Rugg, who is Piskor's co-host on Cartoonist Kayfabe is drawing homages to classic creator-owned, indie comics.

Ed Piskor's Red Room Is Fantagraphics' Best-Selling Comic In Decades

Such as Eightball for #1 and Love And Rockets for #2. It will be tiered to 1:15.

Also from issue #2 will be Troy Nixey's 1:5 variant and Piskor's 1:10 tiered variant for issue 2.

Red Room will be released in a variety of formats. The series will be published as monthly, four-issue arcs in a standard 32-page comic book format at $3.99 each, with the exception of May's first issue, which will be a specially priced, 64-page double-sized issue selling for $6.99. In the fall of 2021, the first four issues will be collected into a trade paperback. Once the Red Room saga is complete, there will be a total of 12 single issues and three trade paperbacks.

And here's a look at how Jim Ruggs' covers for Red Room #2 were created.