The stories inside horror anthology Flayed Corpse and Other Stories have unobserved terrors killing people in appall ways , and womb-to-tomb ness comics enemies farting in each other ’s presence . It may gross you out at times , but the weird mix of humor , gore , and psychological exploration is also hard to walk away from .
Written by Josh Simmons and draw by a retentive list of creative person — along with Simmons himself in spot — Flayed Corpse collects several years ’ worth of comedian - making by the Seattle - based cartoonist . The stories here are sharp and impolite . Some of them trip you as you read , step on the back of your head so your face gets pushed into mud , and express mirth at your pain . Others take the formal housing of other form of stories and contort them into shapes that elicit queasy laughter .
The claim story is one of those , a two - pager that initially feels like a wry send - up of police procedurals . A handful of medical quizzer hover over a flayed clay , each trying to trump the other with increasingly elaborate theory as to how the man died . Just as the supposition reaches it most ridiculous , the last bozo basically says that it does n’t matter how he exit because nobody ’s death really means anything in the larger scheme of thing .
Simmons ’ writing clear delight in establishing its propinquity to frightening creatures and event and rub down the tension that comes with audience prevision . Drawn by Ross Jackson , “ Do n’t appear Up ” uses crunched , tight page layout next to more opened page to create a sentience of tension and spill . That design reinforces the focal point of the story , which revolves around a secluded artist named Aggie who lives in a theater that has a chemical group of djinni in its eaves . She host a visiting ally who wants more than just a one - dark stand , but Aggie rebuff him to keep the company of nonaged devil in her home plate .
Surprisingly , the longest chronicle in Flayed Corpse heart on a character that legally ca n’t be mention to as Batman . “ Twilight of the Bat ” finds an un - Joker and non - Batman as the exclusive survivors of an apocalypse , apprehensively figuring how to endure with each other in a world where nothing they fought over matters any longer . Simmons takes these characters to extremes that DC Comics never could , with unsettling level of vehement intimacy and relationship reckoning .
There ’s a train of thought of scatological view in Flayed Corpse , and even when they ’re toy for humor , something dark lurks beneath . The titulary character in “ The Great Shitter ” is a giant monster that ’s been defecating over a pocket-size town for years . Life in the townspeople has been reorder to address the ageless menstruum of BM : kids only go to school for one day of their life then they have to bring together the hands that makes certain the town does n’t get overwhelmed .
When I first read “ The Great Shitter , ” it felt like a jarring , in darkness humorous extrapolation of upscaled horror conventions . Possible experiential metaphorical interpretations — like , say , that we can become elephantine goliath as we get older , inconveniently pooping on those that amount after us — only revealed themselves after I cease laugh and honk .
Most of the tale in Flayed Corpse are like that ; they murder you once and then pulsate with aftershocks that thrill them into different frames of meaning . It ’s definitely not a comedian for everyone , but that does n’t make it any less serious-minded , in darkness curious , or rewarding . Or disgusting , for that matter .
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