Exquisite Corpses Spoiler Free Review

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about event comics. If you’re a superhero comic reader, you know they’re even larger than life than a normal comic. They typically feature a large cast of characters crossing over from the shared universe to fight a looming threat facing their world. So you see characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Deadman and Resurrection Man, who normally don’t meet, facing down space gods or whatever threat editorial is cooking up that summer. They are essentially the big blockbuster comics meant to sell a lot of copies, but they don’t really exist outside of superhero comics because they take a good amount of setup that needs to establish a world, but even more so, they don’t exist much at all outside of cape books. I never thought I would be writing a review where I could say with conviction that I have read a genuinely fantastic horror event book that has no prior setup and introduces its entire world, themes, and a cast of striking slashers in a 60-page first-issue but Exquisite Corpses proved me wrong.

Every five years on Halloween, the wealthiest families in America play a game. Twelve of the deadliest people in the world are dropped into a small town with just one goal: last killer standing wins. For the citizens of Oak Valley, Maine—this year’s unlucky arena—the goal is much simpler. They must survive the night.

James Tynion IV, Michael Walsh, Jordie Bellaire, and Becca Carey do something incredible with this first issue, which has made me retrace my steps a few times to ensure I didn’t miss anything. Setting up an entire world in one issue is no easy feat, but setting up a world that begs to be expanded upon is even harder. I didn’t just walk away wanting the next issue to come out; I wanted spin-offs and tie-ins. Heck, I wanted to buy all the beautiful variant covers (which I will get into later because they are important.) Event comics typically have a ton of spin-offs, one-shots, and tie-in books, but this series is set up as a season, so it can be expanded upon later. If the first issue of Exquisite Corpses is such a blast-the-doors-off-the-hinges experience, I cannot wait to see what the rest of the season has in store. The remainder of my review will be as spoiler-free as humanly possible, but if you want to go into this series with as little knowledge as possible as I do with my reading and you trust my opinion as a seasoned horror comic reviewer just know this has my seal of approval to pre-order now. Let’s get to slashin’ then… shall we?

Michael Walsh(The Silver Coin, Frankenstein) and Jordie Bellaire (The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem, Detective Comics) are two of the best artists in the business, full stop. Walsh’s ability to tell a story with different techniques shows a master of the utmost craft and Bellaire’s grasp on coloring as if she had the powers of the goddamn rainbows in her fingertips in works like, I wasn’t worried that the slashers would look dull, but even I wasn’t ready for this. The range at which the killers in this book hit is incredible. My favorite thing about each individual killer is that I do not have a single touchstone to compare them to in other media. There are no Freddy or Jason comparisons to any of them. They are all so visually striking with color and aesthetics that they feel wholly original. Tynion and I discussed them during our recent interview, in which he talked about how he and Walsh spent a long time going through their creation back and forth. Tynion seems to have a knack for creating original characters that sell. However, what is more important is that they fit into the event comic format. 

Each of these psychotic killers in Exquisite Corpses is handpicked by one of the wealthy families for their skills to be dropped into the sleepy little town slash killing field for their sick game. Each is from a different area in the country. It fits with the same format of the event comic where different heroes come from all over to face some threat, even if, this time the danger is one another. So imagine if Lex Luthor picked Superman from Metropolis, Joker chose Batman from Gotham, and Circe picked Wonder Woman from Themyscira to have them all fight in.. like Cincinnati, Ohio. Each of these killers would have very different vibes from their own horror films, even though they are all slashers. For example, Fox Mask Killer, who you see on the main cover with the aforementioned fox mask and mesh shirt wouldn’t have the same vibe of stories as the mascot suit-wearing lunatic Rascal Randy, who is just a madman wearing a rabbit suit. Putting characters who come from very different worlds together aesthetically is always so fun because you get very weird interactions from it. Having so many of them in a high-stakes environment such as this will lead to some very intense interactions, but it makes sense that this would be what a horror event book looks like.

Horror has been and always will be political, with Exquisite Corpses being no exception. Click refresh on any news site and you will see how the rich are ripping the world to shreds for their own gain. That is the lynchpin to the story of Exquisite Corpses. It’s all a game for the rich to see who is going to have power, and it doesn’t matter how many innocent lives are caught in the crossfire. It’s a theme that stretches over everything that is happening in the series but isn’t overbearing enough that it makes you sad to exist in the world as it does in reality currently for most of us. It is a fascinating look at the rich snapping at one another for power and their veiled jabs through the use of violent proxy through their killers rather than their own hands. It’s a rich theme but allows the book’s concept to still be a fun horror event without being overbearing with it.

With typical event books and superhero books as a whole, the thesis is that they are doing everything to save humanity, which is what you are rooting for. So, what do you root for in a horror event? The same thing you have to root for in a slasher, the innocent bystander. Those teenagers, single mothers, and people who are caught in the middle of something they don’t deserve in the slightest. This book introduces its innocents who you will immediately fall for: a young queer couple, one of whom is a horror hound. They are babysitting for their mom next door who has to work for an asshole boss. There is a scene that had my heart pounding in fear for them in issue 1. I typically don’t get that way for comics but I fell for them and am not ready to have heart palpitations every month come May. 

Earlier I mentioned the variant covers, many of the book’s variant cover artists are also included in something listed on the title page as “Corpse Crew” which is a group of artists and writers that serve as almost a writer’s room for the series. Tynion mentioned that after Issue 1 of Exquisite Corpses, they all worked together on the story and the world to build things out in exciting ways to flesh out the story. Most of them have, in one way or another, worked on event comics in the past, so they were working in that same framework on this book to make it follow that mindset to make it successful in the same manner. I believe it has worked. Tiny Onion has allowed Tynion to work in more creative ways to give his comics room to be something more and this book is a testament to that. It is a new breed of event book, unlike anything before it. It is the first horror event book. Event Book X, welcome to the future of horror comics.