Next month Fantagraphics Books will release Red Room: Trigger Warnings #1, the beginning of the next four-issue miniseries in cartoonist Ed Piskor‘s indie splatterpunk series. The issue arrives with a quartet of covers, and today The Beat is pleased to reveal the three incentive variant covers that will accompany Piskor’s own main cover for the issue.
Here’s how Fantagraphics describes Red Room: Trigger Warnings #1:
The best selling, most talked about series of 2020 kicks off its second four-issue “season” with another self-contained mini-masterpiece of monthly comics storytelling. In this issue, the Decimator presents… The Rat Queens! And unfortunately for them, they are front and center in his most horrific red room broadcast yet!
The debut issue of Trigger Warnings will feature incentive variant covers by Piskor, his Cartoonist Kayfabe co-host Jim Rugg, and acclaimed cover artist and Marvel Stormbreaker Peach Momoko.
In an interview earlier this year with The Beat‘s AJ Frost, Piskor described how reading a book on horror by Stephen King inspired the creation of Red Room:
I was reading Stephen King‘s Danse Macabre, where he lays out all of his multimedia horror influences from over the years: novels, comics, TV, radio, film, etc. One thing was abundantly clear about all of his favorite inspirations: when they were released, they exploited the zeitgeist. Something new was in the ether when those works came out—ranging from the atomic bomb to suburban conformity. It made me think in the direction of “What are some cool horrific possibilities in this modern day that couldn’t have been thought of even a few years into the recent past?” The dark web—and the idea of an internet that is ungovernable—seems rife with great, scary possibilities. Heck, people do ridiculous shit on the regular internet with little regard. Imagine an internet where one faces no consequences while within that system.
The Red Room series is the latest Fantagraphics project from Piskor, whose previous work with the publisher includes the Eisner-winning Hip Hop Family Tree series. Piskor’s other work includes X-Men: Grand Design for Marvel and Wizzywig from Top Shelf.
Check out the covers by Rugg and Momoko for Red Room: Trigger Warnings #1 below. The first issue of the four-part series is due in stores on Wednesday, December 8th. Preorders for the issue and all of its various covers are open until next Monday, November 8th.