Exquisite Corpses #8

Exquisite Corpses

by James Tynion IV, Pornsak Pichetshote, Adam Gorham (Artist)

As the dust settles and the bodies are counted, a brutal new playing field is revealed. A killer shows their true face…and a survivor takes their first life. Eisner-nominated writer Pornsak Pichetshote (The Good Asian) and accomplished artist Adam Gorham (Hellhunters) rejoin James Tynion IV and Michael Walsh to ratchet up the tension on the most talked-about horror epic of the year!

Genres: Horror, Comics

32 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 17, 2025

About the author

Prior to his first professional work, Tynion was a student of Scott Snyder's at Sarah Lawrence College. A few years later, he worked as for Vertigo as Fables editor Shelly Bond's intern. In late 2011, with DC deciding to give Batman (written by Snyder) a back up feature, Tynion was brought in by request of Snyder to script the back ups he had plotted. Tynion would later do the same with the Batman Annual #1, which was also co-plotted by Snyder. Beginning in September 2012, with DC's 0 issue month for the New 52, Tynion will be writing Talon, with art by Guillem March. In early 2013 it was announced that he'd take over writing duties for Red Hood and the Outlaws in April.

Tynion is also currently one of the writers in a rotating team in the weekly Batman Eternal series.

Reviews

[Machiavelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfectly serviceable issue, but a step down in momentum for me. While there are some genuinely horrific kills, much of the issue focuses on narrative and character work for figures I’m still not fully connected to, which made the pacing feel slower than earlier installments. Not bad at all — just less propulsive than the series has shown it can be.

[Colin Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a frenetic issue! This one really had the feel of a slasher movie but with arresting images that would flash by in a movie. Now we’ve also got a civilian champion in the mix…

The art has been so good on this book overall, but it’s also the details that stand up alongside the big gory splashes. Walsh draws an impeccable toilet and stall, for instance.

[Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad Laura is stepping up but she should have taken the mask. Any edge right? Also RIP Pretty Boy. He’s not dead but his looks sure are.

[Cybernex007 · Rating 5 out of 5]

PEAK PEAK PEAK PEAK PEAK PEAK PEAK! Omg one of the best issues yet, that was phenomenal. Getting more and more unhinged by the second, I love it so much! This issue immediately picks up from the last with the game master in full freak out mode after Lyla Blaze blew up the pit and pretty boy with it and all of the camera feeds cut out right as lone gunman and the fox mask killer were duking it out. This is exactly what the 13 pay to see and New York threatens to march the game master into Times Square and disembowel him if he doesn’t fix things immediately. You can basically see the drugs pumping through his systems as he looks the game master in the eye, as he rushes to get the groundskeeper on the line to work on getting the feeds back up. All the while Pennsylvania, the previous winner, walks up to gloat at Massachusetts. In fourth years they haven’t won once and as the feeds start to come back up Mass decides to walk away for a slight solitary moment in the bathroom….quickly interrupted by South Carolina attempting to cheat and call her sister using a radio device. Majorly against the rules but Mass doesn’t seem to have any to rat her out yet.

As we jump back into the killing field, we join Audrey as she climbs from the wrecked ambulance with only finding Jason on her mind. She wanes to help Laura but doesn’t have the time and opts to run after him instead and right towards the pit. Speaking of the pit…things aren’t going great. Pretty boy is still alive but he got the Harvey Dent Two-face treatment in that a lot of his body and half of his face is covered in shrapnel. Loosing that one aspect that he actually cared about, and seeing people freak out at the sight of him finally sent him over the deep end and he immediately started to slaughter what was left of the teens in the pit with his axe. Even going so far as to using his bare handed strength to rip apart people’s faces. But previously speaking of Jason he is of course not at the pit, and currently leading Xavi and Mike to the last place he saw Craig…the currently burning corn maze. Xavi throws caution to the wind and runs in to try and find Craig, forcing Mike to watch Jason and carefully chase after Xavi. After a bit of hazy searching through the chaos they finally find Xavi…holding Craig’s dead shot through body. Oh no, oh oh no. I’m so sorry Xavi, I’m so sorry Craig. If it helps he died trying to defend a child and it was quite heroic, but right now Mike makes sure to keep Jason’s eyes covered with his hat as he consoles Xavi and gets him out of the maze. We also see Audrey make her way to the pit only to find the carnage pretty boy left behind. She does find a piece of Jason’s costume and has a bit of hope, but has to quickly respond and pull pretty boy’s axe out of someone’s face to send it right into the burned to a crisp face of Layla Blaze as she tries to approach Audrey. Audrey without thinking has now killed someone, and that’s tough even if they really deserved it.

But the real meat of this issue occurs when Laura wakes up and finds Audrey gone but the long gunman, mask off, stabbed and bleeding out next to a gravestone. He orders her to take the mask and firearm, mentioning the only way to survive if by using them and slaughtering every lunatic she sees. But Laura is a medic so she immediately attempts to help the lone gunman, allowing him to offer up even more information about their situation. He tells her about the groundskeeper, the radius he is currently keeping, and about the ones in charge that send these killers out…the thirteen. Laura then injects the gunman with something to help with the pain, but he knows they are past helping him. He mentions that at the very least he will go knowing one less soldier died because of him…this shocks Laura, he knows she was a soldier through her actions and cadence. The two formerly introduce their ranks to each other and are able to share a nice moment as Laura mentions she was never deployed and all she really did was check for STDs. But it seems the long gunman is putting a lot of faith into her as he orders her to take his weaponry. She still went through basic and she still has a lot of hope that they can do something to stop these mysterious thirteen…the lone gunman doesn’t share this sentiment. There is a specific monologue from him I will site here that goes especially hard:

“Every conflict has it… a point of no return. When violence becomes war. And the first stage of war is always the same…Denial. Because war is always something that could never happen here. Because war reveals who we are beneath the skin. The truth, we don’t want to see…that we’re all monsters stumbling alone. And that’s how we’ll die. Alone. Because we are small, and they are big.”

Laura calls him out for that being utter BS, and I couldn’t agree more. She wants to find a way to make the thirteen back off, and in his final breaths the lone gunman can only cough and laugh…his dad can she really go with that little gun? How far is she willing to go? Laura for the first time starts to go into her history. Her father was born in this town with dreams of getting out, this place was small and he thought about enlisting but then she was born and he dint want her growing up with a dad stationed somewhere else. He worked two jobs saving up to get them out, and then her mom died and he could barely hold down one job and raise a girl himself. But he never complained or got angry, he always just showed up and made sure she knew she was bigger than this town and smarter than him and could do more than he could dream of and her out. He was surprised when she enlisted but the army made nothing clearer for her, she just knew she didn’t want to disappoint him after everything. Then a drunk driver hit him and she came back to take care of stuff and got a job her uncle found. Even if she doesn’t know anyone here and all her friends have gotten bigger and left, deep down she has always known who she is…”I’m my father’s daughter. And it goes as far as it takes.” As Laura takes up the gunman’s pistol with the fury of someone who could go all the way, we end the issue back at the control center with confirmation that Layla Blaze and the king gunman are dead. Massachusetts has lost and takes a massive drink as Pennsylvania toasts, and South Carolina can’t help but have a worried look. There are only a few more killers left and it seems that South Carolina has come to the pit and spotted Audrey. I have no idea how pretty boy is still standing after all that damage, and who knows where rascal Randy, the fox mask killer, or recluse are. Love this series.

[Daniel Freer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good AGAIN, BUT....(POSSIBLE SPOILERS, NOT EXACT. DONT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THIS ISSUE!!

The way it ended, I hope isnt the direction the series is going to go!!! It went from one of the most badass, gory, gruesome, REAL and scary stories to "OH man arw they really gonna try and push this bullshit on us?!?!?!?" I mean that had to be one of the worst ways to continue that, they could have had a WAY MORE REALISTIC person take that mantle or made more of a point and flesh out the part of the narrative that they just decided to add to a characters story in a few pages making it so much more unrealistic and like their trying to check off DEI boxes or something. Hugely stupid if that ends up being the catalyst for what was becoming a GREAT READ!!! All the other stuff was really good as usual. The art the writing, twists and turns with the characters but the the way they did what they did with LONE GUNMAN COULD BE WHAT DESTROYS THIS SERIES CAUSE LONE GUNMAN WAS SUPER EXPERIENCED AND BAD ASS BUT NOW SOME RANDO WILL SOMEHOW NOT ONLY WIN BUT SOMEHOW TAKE OUT THE 13?!?!? YEAH SORRY, THAT AINT HAPPENING. You all had a great series on your hands and why you decided to take it in that direction is beyond me!!!!!

[Stephen Tizzard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid action filled issue with some fantastic sequences.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blood, guts, gore, and all the murder in issue 8 of the series.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5)