Reviews by:
RATE THIS COMIC BOOK
6
5
4
3
This is the first issue of Ed Piskor’s new series, Red Room. As the title implies, this is a series about Red Rooms, which are places on the dark web where people can watch live streams of people getting tortured and brutally murdered. People need to pay good money (on Bitcoin) to watch these lives, so the people hosting them make a very good living out of it. This issue follows a man who’s a clerk for the police. After his wife gets killed by a drunk driver he’s left alone with his daughter and he’s having some problems. At the same time some Red Room legends are having a hard time making more streams, because they aren’t as popular as they used to and another streamer called Poker Face has been getting all the attention. They find out about the man and how he used to make amazing Red Room videos, so they kidnap him and offer him the opportunity to work for them (which means torture and murder people live, while wearing a mask). The man agrees, so he starts doing that, so that he can make money to send his daughter to a good college.
This is a very unique comic. It has a lot of disturbing images and ideas, but somehow it manages to be great. The relationship between the man and his daughter is very well written. They are having many problems, as teens and parents usually do, but they also have a deep love for each other. This aspect of the comic is especially good because of how it contrasts with all the gore. Another thing I liked about the comic is that it’s not simply an excuse to draw people getting tortured. Underneath all that I think that there’s a very interesting social commentary, about internet, its future and the way people abuse people’s natural urges to profit. Furthermore, another thing I like about the comic is the comments of the lives. Whenever there’s a Red Room live shown in the comic, we also see the comments the viewers leave. They are all very interesting and many times actually funny and certainly make the images depicted in the lives seem less disturbing. What surprised me the most about this comic is how much I loved the torture and murder scenes. I’ve never considered myself someone who’s a fan of gore, but somehow in this comic I loved it and I’m not sure why.
The artwork of the comic is incredible. It’s very detailed but also not extremely realistic. Ed Piskor has a very unique style which is beautiful and fits perfectly well with a story like this. He has a great understanding of direction, so the perspectives of each panel are always excellent and work perfectly. Also he’s amazing at drawings the torture scenes. The way he draws the bodies and especially the skin getting ripped off is very disturbing and also fantastic. Other than the artwork and the writing, Ed also does a great job with the lettering. Lettering is something that usually when is good goes unnoticed and when is bad distracts the reader in a terrible way. If that’s the general rule, then Ed’s lettering is a paradox, because while it’s amazing, it’s also very noticeable and distracting, exactly because of how good it is. There’s a beautiful consistency in each letter and all the speech bubbles are so gorgeous that it makes it impossible for me to not spend time admiring them.
Overall, this is a great first issue and I can’t wait to see what’ll happen next in the series.
10/10
RATE THIS REVIEW
6
5
4
3
