Posted in: Comics, Fantagraphics | Tagged: Ed Piskor, fantagraphics, fcbd, free comic book day, red room

Jim Rugg's Eightball Cover For Ed Piskor's Red Room, Coming To FCBD

Published Wed, 17 Mar 2021 10:39:52 -0500

Earlier today, Bleeding Cool scooped the news on the full Free Comic Book Day titles for the 14th of August, 2021, including Ed Piskor's new horror comic book series Red Room from Fantagraphics, which will launch for FCBD. The Red Room Free Comic Book Day issue will feature 100% original content, exclusive to FCBD, and will be published between the first and second Red Room series. While the series is intended for mature readers, the FCBD story will be the equivalent of PG-13.

And Bleeding Cool also has one of the three variant covers, an Eightball homage by Piskor's fellow Cartoonist Kayfaybe podcaster Jim Rugg, that will accompany the first issue of the main Red Room series launching in May with an oversized 64-page first issue

The Red Room Free Comic Book Day issue will showcase the dark and twisted world of Red Room, where criminals livestream murders on the dark web for fun and profit. Fantagraphics will publish the debut issue of Red Room on May 19, 2021 with an oversized 64-page first issue, featuring a standard cover by Piskor, as well as orderable variant covers by Piskor, Street Angel artist Jim Rugg (who co-hosts the popular Cartoonist Kayfabe with Piskor) and superstar artist Peach Momoko. The Red Room Free Comic Book Day issue will be available nationwide on August 14, 2021.

Now that Peach Momoko has gone Marvel exclusive, is this the last of her variant covers for another publisher for the foreseeable?

Piskor has been teasing the series on Patreon and Cartoonist Kayfabe, his popular podcast with cartoonist Jim Rugg, who says "We're going to be talking about Red Room on each and every episode of Cartoonist Kayfabe. Comic book shops are going to want to have plenty on hand with issue 1 drops in May." Ed Piskor states "Red Room is a cyberpunk, outlaw, splatterpunk comic that you can't unsee once you feast your eyes on the mayhem. Think of Red Room as modern day E.C. Comics, infused with the dream of Black Mirror. These are subversive, stand alone stories that are all part of a larger, twisted narrative."

The comic book series will be told through a series of interconnected, stand alone stories, focusing on unsavory characters that lurk in the most grotesque corners of cyberspace. The murders are a mystery, the victims unknown. Aided by the anonymous dark web and nearly untraceable crypto-currency, business is booming and the viewership is ever-growing.

It will also 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, three trade paperbacks and the Free Comic Book Day issue.

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