Introducing EXQUISITE CORPSES, Your Favorite New Comic Book
A special newsletter from the Onion-in-Chief himself, James Tynion IV, about the new comic project from him, Michael Walsh and Image Comics!
Hello Friends,
It’s been a minute since you’ve heard directly from me, but today felt like a pretty good day to wheel myself back out into the sunlight and do an old fashioned newsletter straight from the horse’s mouth. I am the horse in question. Your trusty steed. And I’m here to do one of my favorite things: I get to pull the curtain back on a project that I’ve been working on in the shadows over the last couple of years.
We’ve been hinting about this bad boy since we released our newspaper, TINY ONION PRESENTS (or TOP) at New York Comic Con last fall. A little before that, really, when we brought a group of incredible comics creators to Buffalo, New York to shape this story and bring it all to life. We’ve been calling it Project Exquisite, but now we can proudly call it by it’s true name.
EXQUISITE CORPSES is coming to comic shops this May from Image Comics. A giant-sized 60-page first issue by me and Michael Walsh. It’s a high-octane horror comic that sees twelve of the deadliest and most colorful killers in the world descend on a small town to see who will be the last killer standing. It’s the story of those killers, the ordinary people of that small town who have to survive their deadly melee, and the wealthy families that sponsored the killers and unleashed them in the first place.
We see this as the first big swing of Tiny Onion. The kind of comics event and storytelling experience that I built my company to create. We see EXQUISITE CORPSES as the action-horror answer to the Energon Universe. In success, we’re looking to create a franchise that we believe can last for years, across multiple series. And to do that, we brought the kind of energy and resources that are usually reserved in the comics industry for superhero or licensed stories. And we’re doing it with a group of the most incredible creators working in comics.
We announced today in Forbes, and you can read more about it right here.
WHAT EXACTLY IS EXQUISITE CORPSES?
In a lot of ways, EXQUISITE CORPSES is a game developed by me and Michael Walsh, and the first players of that game were the creators we brought onboard to help bring the story to life.
The two of us spent a year building out the ground rules for a story and the universe around it. As a part of that, we built twelve absolutely terrifying killers, each with an incredible design and a horrifying backstory. We built a detailed bible about the town of Oak Valley, Maine and the characters that reside there. I wrote the 60-page first issue, which serves as the introduction to the game, and lays out its rules and its stakes. We also laid out storytelling rules. I laid them out on the writing side, and Michael laid them out on the art side. We wanted coherence, for the entire thing to read as a singular unified experience, not something disjointed and individuated. We wanted the whole to be elevated from the group collaboration off the original core concepts.
And then we set out building a team. Our Corpse Crew. We wanted this to be the kind of collaborative storytelling experience that I missed from my days jamming with fellow creators on a superhero event story, and that Michael Walsh had done so well with his SILVER COIN anthology series. We recruited collaborators we knew would excel in this world.
The first recruit was Jordie Bellaire, a phenomenal colorist and excellent horror writer (REDLANDS continues to be a personal fave). Her colors would unify the entire project, and her suggestions in the room were always the most violent and horrific (to our eternal delight). Pornsak Pichetshote is one of the best comics writers of the last few years (do yourself a favor and pick up THE GOOD ASIAN and INFIDEL), and Che Grayson is one of my favorite rising voices in the industry (check out the incredible DARK SPACES: GOOD DEEDS), and the two of them have extensive experience working in TV writers room with an unerring eye for character and voice. Tyler Boss is one of my favorite artists in the biz, and I had been blown away by his writing on the upcoming YOU’LL DO BAD THINGS, so we brought him in the room as well. And with Michael Walsh as the project’s co-creator, we knew we wanted him as a writer as well as an artist. Everyone on the Corpse Crew (except for me, ahahaha) had these multi-hyphenate backgrounds in making comics, and while we broke the story on the board, Tyler and Michael were sketching key moments and images on notepads, and Jordie was talking about the moods and tones of each horrific scene, and Che and Pornsak kept us from straying from each character’s arc and path.
We played the game together. Before we got into that room, we didn’t know which killer would survive to the end. We didn’t know which of the civilians of Oak Valley would survive. We just had the rules. It was the most creatively exciting weekend of my life, and the story we all built together was so much better than anything I could imagine cooking up on my own.
We believe that collaborative energy is exploding on each page of this comic. Since the original writers summit, we’ve also brought on the incredible artistic talents of Adam Gorham, Claire Roe, Gavin Fullerton, Marianna Ignazzi, Valentine De Landro, and the amazing Becca Carey on letters.
I write the first issue, and Walsh draws it. From there, the two of us create the framing sequence of each issue, following the twisted families who put this game in motion (acting as both the Gamesmaker and Groundskeeper, whose designs in the comic might be familiar to anybody who know the two of us in real life). The writers and artists we’ve recruited tell the story of the people in Oak Valley trying to survive the presence of these horrific killers. Then Walsh and I will tell the entirety of the epic conclusion over the last few issues of this first story cycle.
It's an ambitious project, but it’s been so damn exciting to be a part of, and see it all come together. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in comics.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL
We’ve been talking about this as a game that Walsh and I created the rules for. Well, let’s just say that’s not the only game element of the whole thing. All of you on the comics side of things might not know that Michael has also been providing his incredible art for Magic: The Gathering cards for years, and is deep in the tabletop gaming world. From the first conversation about it, he kept telling me this could be more than just a comic book.
And then the first time the Tiny Onion team met up with him in person, last winter, to lay out our plan of attack, Michael revealed that he had a rough structure for how a tabletop card game could be played. He broke out a blank set of dry-erase cards and started drawing on them with a marker, so that we could play the first round of that game in person…
Well… Maybe I should just leave it there for now. But we built this game for people to play, both the creators behind the scenes and the readers at home. There will be a lot more to announce on that front soon, and retailers attending ComicsPro this Friday might get a chance to get their hands on a special secret promo item that shows off what we’re building…
AND THAT’S STILL NOT ALL!
Oh god, really?! Jazzlyn just hit me with the cattle prod to remind me that we’ve got another really exciting piece of the EXQUISITE CORPSES rollout: we’re going on tour! With every issue of EXC, I’ll be making a stop at a different retailer around the country to sign the book and all of my other titles. We’ve got lots of goodies we’ll be dragging along with us to these stops.
We’re calling it the Corpse Tour. I’ll be meeting up with lots of our EXC and Tiny Onion talent at various stops along the way. We want these events to be cool little parties. We’re really excited about it. We’ll be announcing the first few stops on the Corpse Tour very soon. But I’m excited to get out into the world and meet a whole bunch of you in person!
ANYWAYS…
We’re so damn proud of this book, and we think it really has the potential to be something big. You can see the phenomenal designs of the killers we’re putting in play here, and the characters we have in store. And like I said, the first issue is going to be 60 pages, for the price of a regular 24-page comic. We believe in this book, and we sincerely hope you check it out.
Tiny Onion is going to be a lot of things, but everything at the core of what we are is centering the joy of collaborating to make a new comic. I want to spend my life building worlds to play in with my friends and peers, and I built a company so that I can do just that. And the byproduct of that play will be years and years of exciting comic books with dynamic characters for all of you to read and enjoy.
I love when we can reveal a new project. I do love the showman energy of Barnum & Bailey-ing a new book. So trust that you’ll be hearing a LOT from me over the next few months. I’m doing my stretches and getting ready for the podcast and interview gauntlet.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON, JAMES?
Isn’t that enough?!
I am, admittedly, tired. Folks who follow me on Instagram or BlueSky probably know that I’m on the road right now. I was at Megacon two weekends ago, and spent the last week with my boyfriend in San Diego for Valentine’s Day before making my way up to Los Angeles for the impending ComicsPro this weekend. In two weeks I’ll head to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con, and then I finally get to go home to Brooklyn and turn into a pumpkin (aka: catch up on scripts). ComicsPro is sure to be an exciting time. I can’t wait to talk EXQUISITE CORPSES with retailers and bang the drum and talk about all of the cool stuff Tiny Onion has been cooking.
While I’m in LA, I’ll also be having lots of exciting conversations on all of my projects developing in Hollywood. There’s a lot I can’t reveal, but there have been exciting developments behind the scenes on both SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN and THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, and I’ll be meeting about them both while I’m in town. Another one of my major properties just got officially optioned for animation, which I’m very excited about. And we’ve got three projects based on my works developing now as feature films. I wish I could shout all of the details on these projects from the rooftops, but trust that I’ve been hard at work since the launch of Tiny Onion last year.
We’ve got lots of exciting plans, and with EXQUISITE CORPSES up and running, it’s time for me to dig back into a lot of the cool shit we’ve got in store that I’m NOT allowed to talk about. But it’s all so freaking exciting. I know it seems like an impossible load of work, but I feel calmer and more confident than I ever have in my creative life.
The last issue of THE DEVIANT (a beast at 51 pages) is wrapped and off to the printer, and will be in stores 3/19. THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH is having its fifth anniversary this year, and we’ll be revealing more about how we’re celebrating soon. SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN is back in April with issue #41. W0RLDTR33 is going to blow people away with its showstopper issue #13, and we’ve got a lot of cool shit coming soon. WYND is breaking my heart as we careen toward its big finale. Elsa is jamming on the next issue of THE CITY BENEATH HER FEET. The next story cycle in BLUE BOOK is almost wrapped, we've already finished all of LET THIS ONE BE A DEVIL, and you’ll be hearing about the next volume of THE ODDLY PEDESTRIAN LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER CHAOS very soon!
We’re making lots of cool comic books and I love doing it! Thank you all for reading them. You are all my valentines and I love you very much.
Anyways. More soon.
Be well!
James Tynion IV
Los Angeles, CA
2.18.2025
Jazzlyn from the top rope with the cattle prod!
This looks awesome, James, congrats!
Hell yeah!