Red Room #1A, Ed Piskor Cover, Fantagraphics '21

Ed Piskor cover.

Red Room #1 is the debut issue of Ed Piskor's horror series for Fantagraphics, released May 19, 2021. Piskor serves as writer, artist, and cover artist, bringing the same obsessive visual density and underground-comics energy that defined his Hip Hop Family Tree and X-Men: Grand Design work to an entirely different register. The series centers on illicit livestreamed murders in a dark-web cyberspace setting, blending exploitation horror with digital-age dread. At 64 pages and priced above a standard single issue, the first issue was conceived as a complete, self-contained story rather than a serialized hook, giving it unusual weight as a debut.

Cover A carries Piskor's own cover art, the standard first-printing version. The issue launched alongside collectible variant covers from Jim Rugg and Peach Momoko, though the barcode on this copy identifies it as the Cover A first printing. A 2nd printing sketch cover was subsequently released, making the original first printing the earlier state. The series went on to become one of Fantagraphics' strongest-selling comics in the publisher's history, a notable achievement for an independent house built on art comics and literary cartoonists rather than genre serialization.