This New Comic Book Satire Flips Squid Game On Its Head [Exclusive Preview]
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South Korean TV series "Squid Game" has become a smash hit. The game itself may be fictional, but "Squid Game" speaks to a true story: people driven to the edge by poverty and debt. True not only in hyper-capitalist South Korea but in countries around the world, so it's no surprise that "Squad Game" is an international hit. David Fincher has an American "Squid Game" remake in the works, but that feels redundant given how universal the original feels.
What about a story that flips the premise, though? What if it were the people who made this unbalanced world that had to pay for it? Horror filmmaker turned comic artist Patrick Horvath has the answer with his new comic one-shot, "Free For All," that promises "a brutal new vision of capitalism by combat."
"Free For All" was previously published as a digital exclusive, but publisher Oni Press is bringing it to print with remastered art. For all the new readers, the synopsis for the comic establishes the world, the stakes, and the characters:
"In the future, the World Finance League exists to benefit all, randomly choosing those from among the billionaires and trillionaires of the world and presenting them with a choice: either donate half of their assets to the common good or defend them in ritual combat. Reigning champion and real estate magnate Ted Brooks has 22 victories under his belt-defending the wealth he schemed and stabbed to get when he is forced to face his ex-wife, Luella Dominguez, in a fight to the death. Luella has been training, waiting for this moment. But will she have what it takes to defeat the man who would do anything — absolutely anything — to keep his fortune? It's every shareholder for themselves when death and bankruptcy collide in 'Free for All' #1."
Oni Press and Superfan Promotions have shared an exclusive look at "Free For All" #1 with /Film, with the issue's covers and select pages included below. The primary cover is drawn by Horvath himself, depicting slices of Ted and Luella's heads lined up as money drops out.
Oni Press
Variant covers include ones by artists Matt Kindt, Juni Ba, Noah Bailey, and one by Matt Lesniewski presented in both color and black-and-white.
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
Patrick Horvath's Free For All is about the billionaire Hunger Games
Horvath has directed four horror films, but comics are where he's become a superstar. In 2023, he wrote and drew "Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees" for IDW Publishing. Set in a world of talking animals, the comic follows the bear Samantha Strong — who, beneath her friendly small-town girl attitude and teddy bear looks, is a vicious serial killer. The dissonance between the story book visuals and the brutal violence is of course the whole point of the story. Even that title has a cutesy rhyme scheme, but it also suggests Samantha's frightening double-life.
Horvath showed a masterful control of tone in that book, and demonstrates it again in "Free For All." In an interview published in the back pages of the issue, Horvath said he came upon the idea for "Free For All" after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
"It struck me that a lot of the resentment that led up to it had its root in income inequality. If you could solve that problem, it seemed like you could maybe clear a path toward a better world. The basis of the 'donate 50 percent of your wealth' came directly from the Bill Gates and Warren Buffett "Giving Pledge" that they tried to get going around 2006. The gallows humor part of my brain immediately went, 'Yeah, but I bet if you actually enforced that, there would be billionaires who would fight to the death to keep it.'"
You see that in the opening pages of the comic, where pharmaceutical CEO Cameron Miller is chosen by lottery to fight Ted. Miller could have pre-emptively given his money away to avoid being called, but he didn't. Without getting into specific spoilers, money is the root of Ted and Luella's feud too.
As Horvath acknowledges in his interview, more recent events — such as the publicly-celebrated assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson — mean the comic is just as relevant now as when he first thought it up.
Wisely, "Free For All" doesn't get into details about how the World Finance League came about or put these rules in place. The comic is implied to be set in the future due to the presence of technology like robots, but it's never said when in the future. The reason that stories like "Squid Game" and "The Hunger Games" usually feature the lower classes fighting death matches is because they're the lower classes. In the world we're all living through, it doesn't make sense for the people who control the world to submit themselves to its rules. That they would is a compelling fantasy that Horvath draws with relish in the pages below:
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
Oni Press
"Free For All" #1 is scheduled for release on March 26, 2025.