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You might recall Popverse reporting on the moment James Tynion IV decided to retire from superhero comics, a decision that, barring the odd Swamp Thing-adjacent project, the Something is Killing the Children author has yet to walk back. Then again, a writer as prolific as Tynion is always learning from projects he's worked on in the past, so it shouldn't surprise his readers when his history in the superhero space influences

Like, for example, his serial-killer-battle-royale book, Exquisite Corpses.

Speaking with Popverse's Editor-in-Chief Chris Arrant at this year's C2E2, Tynion dove into the Venn diagram between the Tiny Onion book and the genre that most dominates the industry.

"The challenge that I had thrown Michael," Tynion explained, referring to artist and series co-creator Michael Walsh, "When we started building out Exquisite Corpses together was, 'Can we make 12 iconic characters that all kind of clash against each other in that exact superhero way?' Because it's all different costume elements, different colors. We wanted it to be like a burst of energy."

"There are characters," he continued, "That feel like they could have fallen out of superhero comics, but there are also characters that feel like they could have fallen out of 1980s slashers, or out of contemporary video games. You can see the visual influences coming from so many different directions that none of it feels like it's just a nostalgia play."

The result of Tynion & Walsh's experiment, in case you didn't know, is one of the best-selling indie comics of 2025, but the success of Exquisite Corpses didn't stop there. As of this writing, Exquisite Corpses is about two months away from having finished a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to turn the story into a card game. By the end of the crowdfunding period, the campaign had raised almost a quarter of a million dollars.

I'd say that challenge was pretty successful, James.

Interested? Here's where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here's a guide to how (and where) to read comics online. If you're looking for the best comics in recent memory, check out the Eisner Awards winners and the Harvey Awards nominees. And if you like free comics, here's everything we know about Free Comic Book Day 2027.