Exquisite Corpses: Fox Mask Killer #1 // Rev iew
The killer is wearing a mask. It’s a whole thing with her and her organization. They’re hired killers who wear animal masks. They call themselves “The Tooth & Claw.” She’s there in Las Vegas. to kill a man named Michel Rafferty. He’s a job, but he’s also very distasteful. She refers to him as an ugly man. So she takes some pleasure in doing her work in Exquisite Corpses: Fox Mask Killer #1. Writer Che Grayson and artist Adam Gorham open a whole new end of the Exquisite Corpses universe with color artist Jordie Bellaire. It’s an appealing opening with some complexity.
She throws him out of a window in Las Vegas. So she’s clearly done her job, but she’s not exactly being subtel about it. And so as she makes her way away from the room where she killed Michel, she’s attacked by a lot of gentleman in suits and ties. She’s not getting paid nearly enough to kill all of the rest of the people she’s going to have to kill just to get away, but there’s more danger awaiting her on the other side of everything when she is forced to answer for the way she executed that. target in Vegas...
Grayson makes the anti-hero quite aerobic. There's a lot going on in the script that makes her quite likable. It's an interesting mix of different elements that have quite a bit of depth to them. Seems to be quite well executed. The opening issue does have kind of a strange structure in that only about the first half of focuses on the origin of the conflict. And then there's a sudden shift for nine years. Kind of a weird jump for the first issue given him the way it's put together. There's a lot that needs to be set up, but it's set up and kind of a weird way.
Gorham catches some strikingly dramatic angles for all of the action. Stylish killers in animal masks are a great place to start. What might have looked a bit silly when it was first introduced to the comics in the pages of Exquisite Corpses has really started to develop its own aesthetic language over the course of that series and into the now. The title killer with her formal coat, fiishnet top, mask and katana just...looks cool. On top of that, tthe lien work and rendering style of Gorham has a classiness that feels a bit like something that Toulouse-Lautrec might have done. Oddly...it works. Once again--Bellaire shows herself to be one of the best colorists working in the industry in another deeply immersive job of embellishing the line artist’s work.
Well, the plant structure of the first issue feels a little bit disjointed, things should really settle in now, but the basic premise has developed itself. It's a firmly established where all of the stresses and conflicts are for the remainder of the series. And it's going to be a lot of fun see where it goes. Above all, the creative team has done a really good job of making the title character very compelling. And very charismatic.
