AWA Studios have unveiled “Rumpus Room,” a satirical horror thriller written by Mark Russell, with art by Ramon Rosanas, coloring by Ive Svorcina, and lettering by AndWorld Design. The five-issue series tells the story of Bob Schrunk, “a technocrat billionaire, collector of bad art, and victim of a hideous skin condition that can only be treated with a highly illicit and definitely not FDA-approved face cream that must be… harvested.”
Schrunk “keeps an assortment of people who’ve offended him in some way imprisoned in his subterranean ‘rumpus room.’ Every week, his prisoners must vote out one cellmate to a horrible fate: their bodies ground up to make the not-over-the-counter facial cream that hides Bob’s morbid skin condition. Bob is in total control, but there’s just one thing he doesn’t know: his most recent ‘guest’ is a cop.”
Russell says, “‘Rumpus Room’ is a parable for how in American civilization, on some level, we’re set against each other by forces that are too powerful for us to reach. It parallels the underlying assumption of American life as well: ‘I can’t do anything about the real things that are destroying me, so I’ll take all my rage out against the people who cross me.’ ‘Rumpus Room’ is about this misguided anger that we all have and how it weaponizes us against each other.”
Artist Ramon Rosanas’s credits include “Ant-Man” and “Star Trek,” while Russell previously penned the AWA series “Not All Robots.” Axel Alonso, CCO of AWA, says “Any project Mark Russell puts in front of me, I’m going to take a good look at it. With ‘Rumpus Room,’ Mark once again displays his unique brand of black comedic social satire, perfectly complemented by Ramon Rosanas’s incredible storytelling. ‘Rumpus Room’ is a dark and demented thrill ride that holds up a funhouse mirror image of the world we live in – exactly the kind of very original storytelling we want to do at AWA.”
“Rumpus Room” #1 will be released on September 20, with Cover A by Tony Harris, a childlike Cover B by Russell himself, and a Cover C by the Allreds, which you can check out below with a preview.
