If you haven't been reading Exquisite Corpses, this Wednesday gives you the perfect reason to start from the beginning.
Season 1 ends with issue #13 this week, and it sticks the landing. Which is worth saying explicitly — because sticking the landing is genuinely difficult. It requires that a series knew where it was going from the start, and that it had the discipline to get there without losing the thread.
Exquisite Corpses has had both.
What the series is
The title takes its name from the Surrealist game — a collaborative exercise where each participant adds to a work without seeing what came before. That structural conceit runs through the entire book. Characters, perspectives, and timelines fold into each other. The story accumulates meaning across issues in ways that reward careful reading and re-reading.
It is also — and this matters — entertaining. Formally ambitious comics that forget to be fun tend to disappear quietly. Exquisite Corpses never forgot. It is weird and dense and genuinely surprising, and it belongs in the conversation alongside the best Image work of the past decade.
The Season 1 finale
Issue #13 resolves the central narrative threads of the first season in a way that feels earned rather than convenient. The creative team clearly had an endpoint in mind when they began, and the payoff reflects that planning.
We won't go further than that. What we'll say is this: if you've been following along since issue one, issue #13 is the issue you've been building toward.
The trade paperback case
For readers who've been waiting for the collected edition: the Season 1 finale is your signal. Volume 1 will be worth owning. The series has the kind of visual and narrative density that rewards re-reading.
We'll have the collected Volume 1 available when it publishes. Keep an eye on superheroempire.com.
In store Now
Exquisite Corpses #13 is available in store and online at superheroempire.com now. If you want to start from issue one, come ask us — we'll tell you what back issues we have in stock.
— Superhero Empire