Exquisite Corpses #12 // Review
There are only two contestants left on the board. They’re both set against each other to finally end the game that’s taken all of October 31st. Once the evening ends, everyone who knows anything is going to be killed. There’s going to be a clean-up and then everything goes back to normal for another five years. Only there are a few things that just might turn out other than expected ing Exquisite Corpses #12. Writer James Tynion IV reaches the 12th chapter of a thirteen-issue saga with artist Michael Walsh. Color comes to the page courtesy of Jordie Bellaire.
Fox Mask Killer from New York has survived. So has Pretty Boy. They’re right there. They’re ready to kill each other. There’s some interest in the outcome of the match. There’s also a considerable amount of concern regarding the people. Some of them seem to have learned a bit more than they should about the contest. People are going to have to be killed before clean-up, but things are going to get complicated after the outcome of the contest between Fox Mask and Pretty Boy. It’s almost over, but things might now quite go as expected for everyone.
Tynion moves things further down the path of the unexpected as the series reaches the thirteenth issue which turns out to be the final one. One might have expected a bit more with respect to the unexpected along the course of the series. However, there is just enough going onto keep the finale of a series from feeling like the final conclusion to the equation. There is real wild energy that the author has managed to fuse into the format of the contest without betraying the overall premise of the series. It's a delicate balance. You don't wanna make it feel too much like a sporting event, which would be boring in comic book format. But you don't want to veer too far from the contest to make it feel like a boring slasher comic book either.
Walsh’s heavy inks continue to dominate the page as October 31 rolled into what is likely to be the final hours before dawn. There hasn't been a very clear reading on the time. Certainly not in any kind of a way that would make it feel like a strong part of the storytelling. However, it would have been in retrospect a little bit nicer to have some sort of a visual feel for the progression of the evening. 12 Issues Take Pl. over the course of a single night. It would be kind of cool to have more of a feel for the various stages of the night. Bellaire baths the page in lots of red. This is the end of the series. So it's going to be pretty traumatic. The colors that she chooses are really powerful.
Again: it's not an easy thing to balance this. But.Tynion and company have managed a very sharp balance between the expectations of a contest based story and the unexpected twists in terms that one would help from a wild horror story. And while it hasn't been totally overwhelming or anything, it's been solidly entertaining.
