Red room : the antisocial network
(Graphic Novel)

Piskor (the Hip Hop Family Tree series) luxuriates in gruesome, abundant violence in this collection of torture-porn horror. The dark net proves the perfect background for a modern chiller: interconnected stories of murder and torture, via live webcasts where victims are graphically disemboweled, flayed, or ground up in machinery, all fueled by Bitcoin contributions from bloodthirsty online fans. Each of the four chapters focuses on a different cast and perspective of "Red Room" broadcasts, but running through is the descent into depravity of corpulent Davis Fairfield, a fan of--and later participant in--the Red Room. "It's hard to admit out loud to being... so damned evil," Fairfield muses, and he's not alone: corrupt cops, cocksure hackers, and violent thrill-seekers are all sucked into this ghastly world. Piskor cites in the intro his antecedents, including splatterpunk 1980s comics like Tim Vigil's Faust series and slasher films such as the banned Cannibal Holocaust, and 1950s EC classics. In this tradition, there are no heroes to be found and no morals to glean, just the requirement of strong nerves and a black sense of humor to appreciate sordid satire. This one's for deep horror fans eager for ultimate gross-out nightmare material. (Nov.)

Cartoonist and podcaster Piskor (Ed Piskor: The Fantagraphics Studio Edition) presents a series of interconnected stories exploring the creators, fans, and victims of a series of websites devoted to livestreaming murder and torture videos. In the volume's longest tale, Davis Fairfield, a seemingly mild-mannered, recently widowed courthouse clerk with a penchant for voyeurism, is courted by the producers of Pentagram Pictures; he's eventually reborn as the Decimator, the studio's most creatively brutal star. When Davis's teenage daughter becomes concerned about his behavior, she embarks on an ill-fated investigation that brings her face to face with an evil beyond her imagination. Meanwhile, the creator of a powerful encryption software searches his own soul after discovering that the technology responsible for his vast wealth has also allowed the Red Rooms (the site of the torture) to flourish. Piskor pays homage to classic horror titles like William Gaines and Al Feldstein's Tales from the Crypt in the best and most narratively satisfying story here, in which a garishly clad figure narrates a young tattoo artist's journey to track down the creators of a video depicting her father's murder. VERDICT While many readers may find the explicit violence displayed here repellent, aficionados of extreme horror and splatterpunk will thrill as nearly every page-turn reveals increasingly gruesome shocks.

Cartoonist and podcaster Piskor (Ed Piskor: The Fantagraphics Studio Edition) presents a series of interconnected stories exploring the creators, fans, and victims of a series of websites devoted to livestreaming murder and torture videos. In the volume's longest tale, Davis Fairfield, a seemingly mild-mannered, recently widowed courthouse clerk with a penchant for voyeurism, is courted by the producers of Pentagram Pictures; he's eventually reborn as the Decimator, the studio's most creatively brutal star. When Davis's teenage daughter becomes concerned about his behavior, she embarks on an ill-fated investigation that brings her face to face with an evil beyond her imagination. Meanwhile, the creator of a powerful encryption software searches his own soul after discovering that the technology responsible for his vast wealth has also allowed the Red Rooms (the site of the torture) to flourish. Piskor pays homage to classic horror titles like William Gaines and Al Feldstein's Tales from the Crypt in the best and most narratively satisfying story here, in which a garishly clad figure narrates a young tattoo artist's journey to track down the creators of a video depicting her father's murder. VERDICT While many readers may find the explicit violence displayed here repellent, aficionados of extreme horror and splatterpunk will thrill as nearly every page-turn reveals increasingly gruesome shocks.

Piskor (the Hip Hop Family Tree series) luxuriates in gruesome, abundant violence in this collection of torture-porn horror. The dark net proves the perfect background for a modern chiller: interconnected stories of murder and torture, via live webcasts where victims are graphically disemboweled, flayed, or ground up in machinery, all fueled by Bitcoin contributions from bloodthirsty online fans. Each of the four chapters focuses on a different cast and perspective of "Red Room" broadcasts, but running through is the descent into depravity of corpulent Davis Fairfield, a fan of—and later participant in—the Red Room. "It's hard to admit out loud to being... so damned evil," Fairfield muses, and he's not alone: corrupt cops, cocksure hackers, and violent thrill-seekers are all sucked into this ghastly world. Piskor cites in the intro his antecedents, including splatterpunk 1980s comics like Tim Vigil's Faust series and slasher films such as the banned Cannibal Holocaust, and 1950s EC classics. In this tradition, there are no heroes to be found and no morals to glean, just the requirement of strong nerves and a black sense of humor to appreciate sordid satire. This one's for deep horror fans eager for ultimate gross-out nightmare material. (Nov.)