In this review of Exquisite Corpses #6, Connecticut’s killer, G4M3R_KID, is looking for the high score. But who will pay the price for his success?
Exquisite Corpses #6
Writer: James Tynion IV, Tyler Boss
Artist: Michael Walsh, Gavin Fullerton
Main Cover: Michael Walsh
Colors: Jordie Bellaire
Variant Covers: Gavin Fullerton, Michael Walsh, Patrick Horvath, Tyler Boss, David López
Pages: 32 pages
Release Date: October 22, 2025
This review contains spoilers
Exquisite Corpses #6 opens with a quick recap between the game’s director and the janitor as to the escalated stakes of cutting off the town with fire and what the score is between the killers. Notably, Lady Carolina is still alive, though gravely wounded from her battle with Fox Mask, and that Rascal Randy is largely MIA.
Mike arrives with Pretty Boy in tow to the local teenage bush party known as “the Pit”. Mike tries to warn the crowd of the conspiracy at play, but his manic state is ignored and ridiculed. The locals go so far as to accuse Mike of being back off the horse, and Pretty Boy taunts him as well.
Meanwhile, Connecticut’s killer, G4M3R_KID, has been palling around with Craig and little Jason while trick-or-treating. Unknown to the happy locals, G4M3R_KID has been killing people door-to-door, racking up a sizeable body count. G4M3R_KID begins to show his true colors after describing the events of several in universe horror-flicks in colorful detail, then threatening Jason’s mom after learning he isn’t allowed to actually watch said films. Craig, upset by this, tells off the young killer, angering him. G4M3R_KID convinces Jason to ditch their chaperone as a “prank”, running into the cornfield while Craig is distracted still trying to get cellphone reception.
Craig gets lost in the maze, and Gamer Kid convinces Jason to try out his drone (name “Calvin”), unbeknownst to the young kid that the footage is in real time and not a video-game style simulation. Jason kills a some dressed up parents in the maze, and accidently kills Craig who saves a young boy dressed in the same costume as Jason. “Calvin” is then broken by an unknown figure, further angering G4M3R_KID. G4M3R_KID threatens revenge on Jason, brandishing a knife and chasing the youngster out of the corn field and into a nearby marsh. Jason is only saved when from the brush, Rascal Randy appears, forcefully drowning G4M3R_KID.
In a surprise turn, Rascal Randy actually leaves the distraught Jason, wandering into the corn maze to kill again. Back at the Elite Party, New Jersey gloats about his killer’s success. As the game enters it’s halfway phase, the director offers to up the ante…to be continued!
Boss and Tynion do address the slow pacing of the book, and does give us a bit more killer action to compensate. I do think that while the extended page length of these issues grants a great opportunity to explore the characters and the universe, the writing has been missing the opportunity of having way more killer mix-ups. I appreciate the subversion of the Rascal Randy/G4M3R_KID/Jason confrontation, I just wish there was more.
Similarly, I fear the Pretty Boy and Mike segments aren’t really going anywhere. Inevitably, I suspect they’ll be some kind of confrontation between the two where Mike will have to “man up” in order to face his fears, but it’s been projected a mile away and feels overdrawn.
I do think the sequence where G4M3R_KID gives Jason control of Calvin is haunting as hell. Child violence is always a prickly subject in order, and while creepy kids are a staple of the horror genre, accidental murder at the hands of a child is something that is rarely explored and morally treacherous to grapple with. This is the kind of deeply disturbing and transgressive subject matter rarely seen in mainstream film and never seen in big two comics.
Art in Exquisite Corpses #6 continues to be technically impressive. Gavin Fullerton is doing a lot of the heavy lifting this issue and he’s absolutely killing it. The heavy inks really sell the increasingly dire atmosphere and match perfectly with Jordie Bellaire’s colors, especially when they go full “giallo” with the reds, magentas and cyans. As previously mentioned, the Rascal Randy versus Gamer Kid moment in this book takes a really subversive twist that is sold beautifully by a five-panel moment to moment page of Randy nonchalantly walking towards the traumatized Jason, patting him on his head, then continuing on past him into the corn field. It flows like magic, especially on a digital-scroll format.
