Red Room: The Antisocial Network #1 by Ed Piskor

Red Room: The Antisocial Network #1 Reviews

• 
  Michelle Kisner

  I’m a huge fan of Piskor’s work and I snapped up the first issue of his new series immediately! So Red Rooms are an urban legend (I hope) where supposedly you can watch live streams of people being murdered on the dark web. Basically, the new version of snuff videos. This follows a particular Red Room that has a huge following and a super gross secret behind where they get their victims.
  
  This definitely warrants a content warning as there is very intense gore and torture depicted. Piskor’s art style is absolutely perfect for this. I also love that the pages themselves are cream colored and the dialogue balloons are white, it’s such an interesting contrast (and one of his trademarks). It’s a monthly comic but apparently each one will be a self-contained story set in the same universe. Good stuff if your stomach can handle it.
• 
  Σωτήρης Καραγιάννης

  Fresh and promising!
• 
  Babs

  Basically, a video nasty in comic form. Murder for $ on the dark web. Bitcoins please! Outlaw to the max and not for the faint of heart. Or for reading in public spaces 😜😜😜☠☠☠
  
  My only gripe....it should have been printed on old style comic paper.
• 
  James

  Refreshingly grotesque.
• 
  Peter Looles

  Red Room #1
  
  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
• 
  Fabio

  Sono un po’ scioccato da questa lettura. Un po’ adoro, un po’ temo. L’ho trovato terribilmente realistico anche da un punto di vista informatico. Lo stile inizialmente mi sembrava confuso, ma ho apprezzato come tutto si sia riunito e armonizzato. Looking forward to volume 2.
• 
  Highland G

  Started out very confusing tbh for the first few pages but once I realised they were telling 3 stories that came together, it made much more sense.
  This story dark and twisted but also has a touch of control and class to it. Its focus being on the ‘families’, makes for an interesting angle.
• 
  Aunt Cassie

  Dull as dishwater.
  
  I've never been a big fan of torture or gore. I've enjoyed S. Clay Wilson, "Gunfighters in Hell" and the first few "Faust" comics. But they had style, inventiveness and humor which this comic lacks.
  
  There's some real eye-candy art in this, the style is very reminiscent of Bill Elder, which is a good thing. But none of the other aspects of the content engages, namely, the set up, the characters, the dialogue and the plot.
  
  And I'm not really part of the fanboy demographic this is aimed at.
• 
  Jack

  Ed Piskor mentioned Black Mirror as an inspiration in an interview, which makes sense given how inane the commentary on internet culture is (which means repeating “Bitcoin” over and over to prove you’re hip and with the times). I’m not sure which is worse, the death metal album cover “sick gore bro” imagery, or the faux-edgy old man jabs at hipsters and drones and other Young People things that only out of touch old people still think are relevant.
• 
  Hazel

  This was absolutely vile in a way that is obviously intentional and wouldn't recommend it unless you are super into splatterpunk. I ask myself often why I keep delving into it and I still don't know?? What am I trying to feel??? I'm going to read the next one?? Why???
• 
  Machteld

  I don’t know how to rate this book. Great drawing, very creepy storyline and graphic...poeh.
• 
  Ricardo Mena

  Este cómic es de lo mejor que he leído en años.
• 
  Maddie

  like piskor's previous work, white guy discovers rap music, this is very white guy discovers rotten dot com
• 
  Osaka Tides

  Sick! Have to read the rest of the series now!
• 
  Ian

  I finished this and actually kinda liked it, but then I saw that Ed Piskor did an antisemitism and never apologized for it so whoops, one star.
• 
  Rorscharch71

  Raw. Hardcore. Disgusting. Funny.
• 
  Ale Ech

  The comic explores the idea of ​​killer "influencers" and streamers on the deep web. Nice!