Dark Horse Gets Romantic With ‘Cyberpunk 2077: XOXO’ This Fall

Welcome to the table,

When I was a kid I was in the back room of the comic shop playing some sort of TTRPG or miniature-based game any chance I could get. Home sucked, and the shop was always full of interesting characters, andm more often than not, the random free slice of pizza. It only made sense that I hide out there from the rest of the world.

Early on, I remember a group of teenagers playing Cyberpunk. All of them seemed so beyond cool to me, so I really wanted to learn this strange new system they seemed to be into. What quickly learned was that while in my normal AD&D games, I was trying to hit armor class zero with my half-elf’s bow, these players were engaged in robbing the skyscrapers of Night City with chainguns and cybernetic limbs.

I learned about the Friday Night Firefight system of combat and was instantly intimidated by the sheer brutality of it. My normal pool of hit points that grew level to level was turned into Swiss cheese with the autofire that tore through their player characters like buckshot through wet toilet paper the moment combat erupted at the table.

I am sure the few games I watched those people play were the reason I have always been both fascinated by the world of Cyberpunk and totally intimidated by it at the same time. This has not changed in 20+ years, because when I recently found myself sitting at home watching the Cyberpunk 2077: Edgrunners show on Netflix, I noted noticed that, even now, the raw splatter and chaos of the setting still harkens back to the worrisome wonder that the world brought me all those years ago.

Now the writer of Netflix’s animated series Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners and Hugo Award-nominated Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams comic, Bartosz Sztybor, shares a love story tied to a gang war that just may take the Maelstrom and the Moxes down with it in Cyberpunk 2077: XOXO.

Created in close collaboration with CD Projekt Red, Sztybor is joined by the main cover and series artist Jakub Rebelka and letterer Frank Cvetkovic. Variant covers for issue #1 are going to be provided by Jeffrey Alan Love, Fabrizio De Tommaso, and Rion Chow.

When gang-on-gang violence erupts as an ambush planned by the Maelstroms on the Moxes gets complicated. As is normal in a Cyberpunk story, the Corpo cargo worth a heavy sum is up for grabs, but loyalty only goes so far when love is on the line. One member of the Maelstroms has found something worth sacrificing for. He’s never known anyone like her. Jaw-dropping, eyes popping, pulse racing, could this be love at first sight? Or could it be a glitch in his hardware?

Cyberpunk 2077: XOXO #1 (of 4) will be available at comic stores on October 18, 2023, and is currently available for pre-order today!

Until next time, for real if you have ever gone from playing RIFTS and AD&D to Cyberpunk it’s like trying to relearn how to think while tied to a train being shot at by snipers using skyscraper-sized plasma canons. It’s a ton of fun and one hell of a rush but more than not you end up totally wrecked.