Written and Illustrated by Ed Piskor
Published by Fantagraphics Books
I was in Junior High School in the early ‘70s and when some of the other kids found out I could sorta-kinda draw, a couple starting paying me dimes to draw their least favorite teachers as disgusting, rotting corpses. I was inspired by the horribly-drawn work in the cheap, black and white Eerie Publications mags. I’m not proud of it, but hey, comic books cost a quarter then so every little bit counted and I took their dimes.
I discovered underground comix soon afterwards and walking, rotting similar-to-my-own drawings from the likes of Tim Boxell and Jack Jackson.
In 1988, Stephen Bissette’s Taboo began, an expensive comics book with similarly visceral and nightmare-inducing art and stories but by luminaries that included Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.
I think I turned out pretty mainstream “normal” in spite of my exposure to all that gore—as well as all the Herschell Gordon Lewis movies and the like I used to watch.
Ed Piskor’s younger than I am and from a wholly different environment, but being a comics fan, he no doubt encountered the same dark, uncensored images I did, along with the influence of the ultra-violent VHS tapes of the 1980s and 1990s like the Faces of Death series. The difference is, I’m not entirely sure that Ed turned out normal in any way.
I’ve reviewed Piskor before—his weird little X-Men series rewriting Marvel history. A talented illustrator and writer, yes, but the thing that most impressed me with that series—and his proprietary Hip Hop Family Tree I checked out afterwards—was his attention to detail such as how he made artificially aged virtual paper for his comics by taking one blank edge chunk from an old issue of The Brave and The Bold, scanning it and replicating it until you have a new blank page, then duplicating it as needed. Now that’s dedication to one’s craft!
Here, in the first collection of Ed’s Red Room series (subtitled “The Anti-Social Network”) the detail comes in a section of the book which is clearly inspired by EC horror comics and hosted by “The Crypto-Coin Keeper!” For this section, broken down into shorter stories than the rest of the book (as were ECs) he even replicates the notorious Leroy Lettering that singled out all but Harvey Kurtzman’s EC Comics. Nice touch, Ed.
But what’s so all-fired terrible about these stories, you ask? Well, imagine if comic book-style villains—particularly the more sadistic modern Batman type villains—were real…and had their own television shows on the Dark Web, where sick or curious people paid in Bitcoin to watch humans be violently tortured and killed in the ultimate iteration of a reality show. Like wrestling only the fix is in and you ain’t NEVER gonna see that guy anymore. Yuck!
And yet it’s fascinating. In a way, it’s like these little-known niche streaming services that develop their own stars even though only a relative handful of viewers ever find them.
Piskor makes some valid satirical points about fame and success, about when one has aged past one’s prime in reality shows, whether it be dancing, porn, or murder. He also reminds that many of the people in our real world who commit the worst atrocities are themselves damaged.
What really makes the book work, however are the “screenshots” from the supposed Dark Web “vodcasts” where we see not only the characters’ code names and titles, like pro wrestlers, but most especially the live chat from those viewing and paying. Familiar to all of us who’ve ever attended a live online event on the Web in general, you get the veterans, the curious, the newbies, the weirdos…The difference being here that they’re all weirdos! These relatively innocent back and forth chats while we—and THEY—are being shown the vicious and creatively sadistic murders of innocent people on the main screens are, to me, absolutely the scariest things in the book.
Is this all real? Because that’s the other really, really scary thing. It might be. I’ve never been on the Dark Web and you probably haven’t either but this certainly seems like the type of thing that could exist there. Outlandish, yes, but, sadly, nothing about this entire concept seems impossible these days.
As far as the book itself, Red Room, from Fantagraphics, collects the first four issues of this comic book series, all loosely connected. As a writer, Piskor does a very good job in tying things together in almost a Pulp Fiction out-of-order way. Purposely disgusting though some of it is, Piskor’s artwork with these original characters is quite good and his work on faces in particular is evocative. This comes through even more in a 32 page first draft story in the book’s back matter told in just sparse thumbnails. It’s as impressive as any of the book’s finished art.
The back matter also contains character concept designs and a long section of annotations for all four of the sections that make up the main body of the book.
If you’re a very open-minded reader with a very strong stomach, Red Room may seem reprehensible but it is also a surprisingly good book, and—love him or hate him—Ed Piskor once again proves himself to be a unique talent in the world of comics today.
I almost feel bad doing it but…
Booksteve recommends.
