Creator Ed Piskor ends Trigger Warnings with his most impressive writing on Red Room so far, and there’s been a lot of excellent writing. He does the issue as an anthology, skipping around an assortment of characters. Some are returnees, like Levee, the hacker from the first series. Before the narrator (the Cryptokeeper, who I’ve missed, it turns out) gets to the next story, setting up the anthology format, it seems like the whole issue will be about Levee’s coding difficulties. So like a procedural issue.

Only Piskor’s not interested in the technical details. When Levee’s around, it’s mostly about him since last series. The most obvious change is in his marriage. Between Levee’s issue last series and this issue, he and his wife have broken up. Only since he kicked her out over her Red Room obsession, it’s not like he can tell the cops. She still wants to reconcile, but she also can’t stop watching.

Then there are some surprise returning characters from Trigger Warnings, who Piskor uses for some contrast and tension, but also to establish (or maybe partially deny) Red Room’s timeline. We’re assuming when things are taking place, something Piskor hasn’t dissuaded, but now time definitely affects things.

Two of the new characters are celebrity analogs; first, the wife of a prominent wealthy guy aerospace designer, but she plays like she’s married to Bill Gates. The husband’s name is even Billy. She’s an evil rich white lady who watches torture exhibits. The big streamer this issue is Mr. NFT, who poses corpses in grotesque ways.

Then there’s a Mr. Rogers stand-in, which is maybe the only time I’ve ever felt like Piskor crossed a line with the commentary about the rich and powerful. Mr. Rogers being a snuff film enthusiast isn’t a good punchline. Piskor confuses the matter–seemingly intentionally—by naming the character “Mr. Gump” and instead bringing Tom Hanks to mind.

Though Tom Hanks played Mr. Rogers too.

It’s a masterful issue, just great, imaginative, horrifying work from Piskor page after page. The last story feels like a final issue for the whole series; only Piskor’s doing more, which is fantastic news.

Technically, this issue’s outstanding. Creator Ed Piskor takes Trigger Warnings somewhere unpredictable and incredibly thoroughly realizes it.

But as a story, it’s all about the punchline, and it’s a long, long time to get to the punchline, going through an entirely unnecessary flashback to a supporting character. Now, the supporting character’s essential, the comic opens with him—specifically with the protagonist killing him. See, the supporting guy—Dustin—has a flash drive worth $400 million, and the protagonist, Rex, is ostensibly going to help him get it unlocked.

It’s a BitCoin thing. Dustin was a pizza store clerk who comped a customer pies in exchange for the BitCoins back when it wasn’t worth anything. Then he lost the password and can’t be a hundred millionaire without it. Enter Rex, who says he’ll help Dustin decrypt it; they just need to go on his yacht to a tropical island where his former business partner lives.

Piskor takes an engaging stroll through BitCoin culture (and its effects on the greater culture). Still, since the issue opens with Rex blowing Dustin away… it seems like Dustin-related flashbacks might not be too crucial to the overall story. Especially not once it turns out Rex’s friend, Satoshi, rules the tropical island as a man-god, like a late nineteenth-century British daydream. Satoshi and his followers don’t need BitCoins the way Rex thinks they do, especially not since they stream their human sacrifices to a Red Room.

Where commenters are impressed with the production values of the ancient Polynesian temples.

The story’s more “set in the Red Room universe” than a Red Room story (at least how Piskor’s defined them over the last six issues), and he makes lots of off-hand remarks about big things, but since they’re one-liners, he doesn’t take any responsibility for them. It’s the first time he’s tried to be buzzy with Red Room. Hard pass.

It’s a solid issue, obviously. Piskor’s really good at his job. It’s just not the level he usually reaches. And the ending’s funny, just slight.

I don’t think I’ve cringed as much during a Red Room since the first issue. Maybe it should’ve come with a Trigger Warning–wokka wokka.

But, no, it’s more just the relentlessness of the Red Room footage. Creator Ed Piskor once again splits up the pages; in the top left, he’s got a suicide note from a couple late teens Red Roomers; it’s all text on a smartphone. The issue opens with the cops finding their hanging bodies. They’ve killed themselves, unable to keep running from the police.

So top left, there’s the Notes.app suicide note and manifesto, then the rest of the page is the teenagers’ story. It’s a classic boy meets girl story; they’re high school seniors, he’s already dealing for someone tangentially Red Room-related, and she’s always been curious about snuff movies. When they happen to see some guy murdered for stealing his girlfriend’s husband’s comic books (Piskor geeks out this issue, including a great-looking Spidey head), the boy realizes the girl’s a kindred psychopath.

They don’t go straight to YouTube snuff movies; they escalate as they try to escape a bad situation. Until that point, the “philosophy” of the note matches the action close enough, but then Piskor starts to explore the cracks. There are disconnects between the two narratives, and they keep growing.

The reveal isn’t unpredictable; Piskor goes out of his way to forecast it, as he makes his protagonists more sympathetic than usual. They’re just psychopaths in a bad situation. Better luck of parentage, and they’d be cops or lawyers.

Now, once their Red Room careers start, Piskor does their videos in the center of the page, and it’s the most intense the comic’s been in ages. What’s so good about it is how Piskor’s controlling that intensity. He’s using it to jiggle the narrative impact, page after page. It’s excellent comics.

Red Room’s something else.

The cover to Trigger Warnings #1 promises a “self contained” story, which is technically accurate–all five issues of Red Room, the first series and now this issue, have been self-contained, but self-contained’s not the same as a good jumping on point.

Especially since this issue is a direct sequel to the original Red Room #1, checking in with serial killer turned snuff video star splatterer Davis and his teenage daughter Brianna. Since we’ve last seen them, Davis has continued his rise to fame and fortune as “The Decimator,” and Brianna has graduated high school, deciding to study journalism in college.

And wouldn’t it be cool to get a head start investigating her dad’s weird crypto-currency lifestyle?

Meanwhile, Davis is in trouble at work—at the Red Room—because he’s been killing women on the side. The inbred human cattle the Red Room provides for him to slaughter on camera aren’t doing it for him; he’s getting the itch for the normies. Except outside murder is forbidden, it might tie someone to the business, so Davis is in trouble with Sissy, the Red Room boss lady.

Creator Ed Piskor splits the comic into three sections on each page. Top strip is Brianna’s story, middle is a Red Room video still with the white Republicans talking in the chat about how cool it is to see gross poor people butchered, bottom is Davis’s story. There’s some crossover between Davis and Brianna’s story, including some intentionally confusing but definitely tone-setting transitions, while the Red Room videos are independent. It’s a wild format for a whole issue, with Piskor keeping the nauseating material steady but with ebbs and flows of concern for Brianna between the top and bottom strips. Davis is terrified Sissy will punish his kid for his indiscretions, while Brianna’s just trying to figure out what’s happening in her world.

So, while technically self-contained, not the place to start Red Room. Hell, you don’t even get a sense of how disturbingly gory Piskor makes it.

It’s an excellent start to the new series; I wonder if Piskor’s bringing back the original cast to check up on them. The format also means Piskor’s smallest panels need a lot of detail, with Brianna going between multiple urban and rural settings; he does a beautiful job with all the art. Trigger Warnings shows no signs of being any less mortifying or grand than the original series.