Exquisite Corpses #1 // Review
The thirteen have started arriving at the site of the competition. Delaware is bringing the fire, but Connecticut is bringing electric...someone called Gamer Kid doesn’t seem to be much of a match for Layla Blaze, but the way the. brackets work-out, they wouldn’t have to face each other to the end and things are just getting started in Exquisite Corpses #1. Writer James Tynion IV and artist Michael Walsh open their big dystopian horror conspiracy series with colorist Jordie Bellaire. It’s an intriguing opening for what could potentially be a very, very fun excursion into darkness in the months to come.
At the opening of the competition, Lone Gunman, Lady Carolina and Leopold Strong are going to be squaring-off. Gunman is armed to the teeth so there’s a good chance that he’s going to make it out of the opening round, but Strong is a huge, crazy mesomorph wielding a ridiculously large hammer, so he’s not exactly going to be a pushover. Lady Carolina is South Carolina’s arrow: a graceful-looking killer on horseback carrying what appears to be a one-handed sniper rifle of some sort. She’s been preparing for this night for years. So her chances are going to be good.
Tynion manages a pretty clean and even sort of an opening issue that establishes the basic premise of the series quite well. The pro-wrestling-combined with murder feel had been done before a million time in places like Rollerball and The Running Man and...well...quite a lot of other films and video games and such over the years. Tynion does a pretty good job of making it feel a bit fresh by fusing the premise with a dark shadow history of the US that goes back to its founding.
Walsh washes the page in heavy shadow and darkness that seem to be perfectly respectable for a story of modern murder. Action punches its way across the page on an occasional combustion amidst the heavy gravity of all the drama. Bellaire’s colors are stylishly garish and washed-out in a visual resonance that seems to suggest the disintegrating ghost of the American dream. It’s a grizzly visual package that never spends too much time on the opulence of the wealth that’s running the contest. It’s all soaked in the bleached-out, leeched-out darkness that seems to cling to everything.
It’s a fun opening. It will remain to be seen whether or not it’s going to be something that’s going to be able to withstand a format that might live to become a bit tedious and repetitious over time. The hope is that there’s enough personality in and around the edges of everything. If Tynion can manage the pacing and the brutality of the premise in the right way it just might end up being a very, very cool sort fiction competition. The real challenge might lie in making the more characters feel appealing enough for everyone to want to follow them straight through the series.
