ANSWERS: Eat Your Words 4

No DeviantArt pic this week, so instead, I should probably show you a bit of why Link: The FACES of Evil is so infamous

(FACES being one of the answers to this puzzle)

Thirteen days have gone by since "Eat Your Words 4" was posted on this blog, and an impressive ten people since then have successfully solved it. A list of them are posted below, and as a reminder, the names in red belong to those who support me on Patreon.

• Grant Fikes ****
• Joe Bernard ****
• Pavel Curtis ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Patrick Jordan ****
• Mom ****
• Debbie Benford ****
• Lynn Sweeney ***
• Dan Simonds ****

Now head below the break for the answers, as well as a solver's comment!

1) REPUBLIC (Relic, Pub)
2) PLEASURE (Pure, Leas)
3) HARDEST (Hart, Des)
4) CAROLERS (Cars, Role)
5) FREIGHTED (Fred, Eight)
6) DIAGRAM (Dim, Agra)
7) FACTORIES (Faces, Tori)
8) MAHOGANY (May, Hogan)

The two words in the highlighted column are PER and REACH, and PER "eats" REACH to get PREACHER

Patron Pavel Curtis "Succeeded in doing it entirely in my head, but it was a bit of a stretch this time!  And today I inferred three new pop-culture facts (without Googling):
  - There is a singer named Corey Hart (or maybe Hart Corey?).
  - There once was a video game called Link: The Faces of Evil.
  - There is a TV show named Preacher.
(Pop culture is not my forte... 🙄)
Thanks for the fun!"

I should note that the TV show in question is based on a comic book series by Garth Ennis