I am a sucker for a well-done industrial aesthetic, so I may need to pick this up -- is it available in mainstream bookstores?

Not in bookstores, no. I managed to get the first two paperbacks in a comic book store back in 2006, and had to order the last two from their website. It's sorta the downside of the "whenever I feel like it" publishing schedule: if you need to consult the auguries to know when the next book is coming out, there isn't much incentive to keep stocking it.

(blows dust off article)

Man, it's been a while. Anyway, just wanted to mention that Christian Gossett has some sort of deal with this new online comics distributor called Beyond Reality, and they've started posting the complete run of The Red Star on their site for anyone to look at. (Right now they're almost through issue 1, so feel free to wait a bit.)

Oh, and apparently Warner Brothers is trying to get ahold of the movie rights, though of course I know better than to speculate if this will end up with an actual movie being made.