Exquisite Corpses: Rascal Randy #1 // Review
Lilly’s off to her first day working at the Roll-a-Way Skate Rink. Her dad has dropped her off with nothing more than a few words and an ASAVAB pre-test. High school graduation in next year and she might want ot consider entering the service. Her dad’s trying to connect with her, but it hasn’t been easy since her mother was murdered. Lily’s entering a darkness tied to her mother’s murder in Exquisite Corpses: Rascal Randy #1. Writer Tyler Boss opens a mini-series set before the events of the Exquisite Corpse mini-series. The story is brought to page and panel by artist Dylan Burnett and colorist Jordie Bellaire.
When Lilly makes it into the skate rink, Eli was supposed to be the one training her. He’s not really into a position to do so as a few young neighborhood thugs have him pantsed and strung-up. Lilly doesn’t like it and thanks to her general disposition, she’s not exactly afraid of them. It’s not going to take a whole lot to scare them off even if they ARE twice as big as she is. The real challenge is coming-up. The real challenge is going to be avenging her mother’s murder...
Boss expands some of the background on Exquisite Corpses in an issue that is firmly set in a world of darkness populated by theatrical serial killers. Lily is written as a a very sympathetic horror hero who clearly cares about people. She’s got a dark side, but she’s a central anchor into the darkness that is haunted by a mysterious killer in a bunny suit. There’s some suggestion that the killer in question is...well...introduced in the opening issue. With any luck, Boss isn’t going to put the most obvious character from the ensemble into the bunny suit as the killer.
There’s a very obvious visual appeal in a bloody killer dressed in a wacky animated bunny mascot costume. To his credit, Burnett does a solidly respectable job of finding the intended cuteness beneath the blood and homicide that the title character is engaging in. Burnett’s rendering of Lilly is sharp. She’s a thin, athletic high school sophomore, but she’s clearly vulnerable and emotionally rendered for the page. Bellaire’s colors form a stylistic bridge between this series and the one that spawned it. (Bellaire did the colors for Exquisite Corpses.) Here she’s able to render the world of Lily with a considerably broader color palette than she was allowed in the original series. It’s an opportunity that allows for a greater range of mood and depth of atmosphere.
The basic premise of the story doesn’t really go out of its way to find a novel approach to a story about a serial killer in a small town. The one truly interesting aspect of it is the atmosphere of the Exquisite Corpses world, which really feels like it’s more centered on obsessions with theatrical serial killers than the one on this side of the comics page. This is actually really cool given the overall nature of Exquisite Corpses.
