CrossGenesis - A CrossGen Comics Retrospective

I mentioned CrossGen as the number one item on my list of Top 10 Things I Want to See From the Disney/Marvel Acquisition and was surprised how many people actually remember and have read CrossGen comics. The entire Disney buyout had me thinking about CrossGen and I've been banging out a post for it since the announcement. This required hours of research (aka re-reading old comics) and hard work (aka coffee), but I'm pleased to bring you my CrossGen retrospective, which you can find after the jump!

CrossGenesis - The Rise & Fall of CrossGen

Founded in 1998 by Mark Alessi, CrossGen was as an answer to the problems in the comic industry at that time. Rather than the male-dominated, superhero-only comics, CrossGen branched out into a wide variety of genres, from sci-fi and fantasy to samurai and detective comics.

Along with a focus on new genres, CrossGen changed the way comics were made. Unlike Marvel or DC, who relied solely on free-lance talent, CrossGen employed their creators with guaranteed salaries and benefits and moved everyone to their complex in Florida to work in the same studio. These exclusive contracts may sound like the norm now, what with how Marvel and DC lock up high profile talent, but, back then, it was unheard of to have that many people on paid salaries.

Additionally, CrossGen started up a mentorship program whereby they fostered new, up and coming talent, such as Steve McNiven, who mentored under Brandon Peterson and Bart Sears at CrossGen when he was first breaking into the industry. For an idea of how well the program worked, McNiven was quoted as saying, "The stuff that I learned in the first month here was more than I learned in three years of doodling on my own."

Early on, CrossGen innovated and grew at a phenominal rate. However, in 2003, a scandal involving freelancer payments blew up, nearly destroying CrossGen as readership dropped off and, more importantly, Barnes & Nobles and Borders stopped stocking their titles while simultaneously returning unsold merchandise, effectively wiping out any financial reserves the company had. By 2004, the company was in bankruptcy.

In November of 2004, the Walt Disney Company bought the assests of CrossGen, with an eye to exploiting the Abadazad property, which they went on to make a series of light novels with. Disney also licensed out the rights to CrossGen's catalogue of comics for reprint purposes to Checker Books, who have done very little in terms of getting CrossGen trades out to readers.

CrossGenesis - The Comics

Below, you'll find a sampling of some of my favourite comics from CrossGen with brief descriptions and what I liked about them.

Sojourn

Sojourn was probably my favourite CrossGen comic and the one that first got me interested in their line. It was a Lord of the Rings style fantasy book that, while not original in concept, was unique in its execution.

Created by Ron Marz and Greg Land, Sojourn is a tale of a medieval fantasy world that was conquered by an evil tyrant named Mordath. In fact, Mordath had conquered this world 300 years ago, but was killed by a legendary hero using a mystical arrow. Raised from the dead through the power of a Sigil, the mysterious mark that grants CrossGen characters their powers, Mordath used his newfound life and power to retake the world. The story picked up with Mordath triumphant and our hero, the beautiful female archer, Arwyn, seeking revenge for the death of her family at the hands of Mordath's orcish hordes.

It was very much the typical Homer's Odyssey quest story as Arwyn attempts to kill Mordath, fails and seeks out the missing pieces of the legendary arrow that slew Mordath the first time. The book was unique for it's strong female lead, world building, beautiful art and the fact the only sigil bearer was the villain.

In regards to the art, Greg Land, now more well known for porn faces and tracing than the quality of his craft, was actually phenomenal on this title. He still heavily referenced his work and you can probably find several examples of his references online in the many hate threads about his current work, but you can easily see he did not trace during his time on Sojourn. Character appearances are consistent from panel to panel, there's flow and composition to the work and it's easy to see why he became a super star so fast after his time at CrossGen. Shame how he fell so far from his earlier work.

The Path

Another comic I was interested in before actually having read anything from CrossGen was The Path, a samurai epic heavily influenced by Lone Wolf & Cub, just about any Kurosawa Akira film and other Japanese literature. It told the story of two brothers, a warlord and a pacifist monk. The warlord was gifted with a Sigil early on in the story, but struck down by the god-like First. As his brother died, the sigil passed to the monk, who swore vengence on the gods themselves.

In addition to this compelling premise, there's war between the Japan and China-like countries, mad emperors, betrayals and some beautiful artwork by Bart Sears. It's still one of my favourite comics and I was sad to see this one cut short.

Ruse

Ruse was a comic I had absolutely no interest in. I still wasn't someone that really paid attention to creators on books and just read whatever looked good to me. Detective/mystery comics patterned on Sherlock Holmes were not high on my rather limited comic reading palete at the time, but this title came in the Edge anthology (see below for more on Edge and Forge anthologies) and boy am I glad it did because it was fantastic.

Written by Mark Waid and with art by Butch Guice, this title was set in the Victorian-era and focused on a Sherlock Holmes-like detective named Simon Archard and his assistant, Emma Bishop. In terms of critical acclaim, Ruse was nominated for five Eisners and won one for Best Colouring. It was also noted that after Disney bought CrossGen that a script had been written for a potential Ruse movie, though not much else had been heard about it since the initial announcement.

All in all, this was a book I would never have read from the Big 2 nor sought out on my own, yet ended up loving and, like many CrossGen books, regret seeing it end due to the bankruptcy.

Crux

Crux was described as the JLA - Crossgen style, and was about a group of reluctant heroes that set out to uncover the mystery of the missing human race.  To be frank, I wasn't impressed with previews or the description of it.  If it had not been included with the Forge anthologies,  I would never have actually read what would end up being one of the best books coming out of CrossGen.

Written by Mark Waid with art by Steve Epting, it had some high production values, an interesting and engaging cast of characters, all unique in powers and personalities, and explained what happened to Earth, the origins of the people handing out all of these Sigils and expanded on the threat of the Negation.  However, none of this got in the way of the story of these characters.  You didn't have to read this or a million other titles to understand the universe spanning implications of the reveals (it did add to it though if you were reading more than just Crux) and it was all just some new and interesting stories that I ended up loving.  Can't believe I was so turned off about it going in and still lament the series abrupt ending.

Negation

Oh, Negation, you hold a soft spot in my heart.  It's like a cross between Thunderbolts (pre-Ellis) & Prison Break, featuring dozens of characters spanning the multiple worlds built up in other titles, but never required you to read those other comics to grasp the concepts of each character.  For example, they had magic users from Mystic's world, Orcs from Sojourn and even a member of the First from The First.

This ragtag group of characters were all captured by the Negation and spirited away to a prison world where they were experimented on as the Negation tried to learn everything they could about these beings from another universe in preperation for a universe-wide invasion.  The first arc introduced us to the characters and dealt with their escape from the prison and, from there, we had friendships, betrayals, backstories and learned a great deal about the threat of the Negation, including their god-like Lawbringers, all in a 'on the run' story as the reluctant group of characters had to band together to survive in a harsh, unknown universe not their own.

Written by Mark Waid and Tony Bedard wtih early cosmic artwork by Paul Pelletier (you know, the guy from Nova and War of Kings), it was a sci-fi adventure with some great characters.  Many of the characters from Negation are still favourites of mine, such as the Moonstone-like member of the First, Evinlea, or defacto "team" leader, Obregon Kaine, who reminded me a lot of Captain Benjamin Sisko from Deep Space Nine.  This was a sci-fi story made up of a mishmash of characters I would probably never have read or found from either of the Big 2 and one of my favourites from CrossGen's extensive line-up.

Brath

Set in the same world as The Path, I was immediately drawn to Brath for its Gladiator and Braveheart-like premise and striking art by Andrea Di Vito, who is currently making his mark on several of Marvel's titles.

Written by Chuck Dixon, Brath took many of the themes from Gladiator and Braveheart and weaved them into its own comic book world that, again, I hadn't really experienced in a comic book format at that point in my comic book reading habits. While I'm not sure how well it holds up with the obvious references springing to mind as I re-read it in preparation for this article (Planet Hulk, while good, suffered from the same deja vu type of feeling due to the heavy influences from the same films), I'm still enjoying re-reading it in preparation for this article, so it must have done something right.

Meridian

Another comic I had no interest in based on the premise. Sure, the art by Josh Middleton and, later, Steve McNiven was pretty to look at, but this was a bright and cheery looking comic that seemed aimed at female readers more so than the typical Big 2 reading comic book fan that I was at the time (and still am, to an extent).

Written by Barbara Kesel, Meridian was set in a fantasy world with floating islands and revolved around the trials and tribulations of a teenage girl named Sephie, who's parents were killed by her evil Sigil bearing uncle. Sephie, who also received a Sigil, must deal with the new responsibilities her powers and the death of her parents have thrust upon her, love and growing up. It's very much a Spider-Man-like origin dealing with power and responsibility built on the deaths of loved ones and newfound powers.

What's unique about it, aside from the beautiful art and world building of the title, is that this isn't a male hero in female form. She's not the typical femme fatale (god I hate that description for any character). She's just a normal person who's gender didn't define the book like many of Marvel's or DC's female heroines' gender does. I was actually a bit ashamed judging the book as a "girl's book" before having read it and still look back on it with fond memories. If only one book came back from CrossGen, I'd be more than pleased if it was Meridian.

CrossGenesis - Forging New Ground, Both Online and Off

Digital Comics

Digital comics initiatives are few and far between these days. Marvel has made a half-assed attempt at it with their subscription based, Flash reader-only Digital Comics Unlimited, which seems to be named just for an acronym to spite DC, but, otherwise, there's no real online presence for comics. Longbox is about the only one that looks like it has its head on straight in terms of how digital services work, using an iTunes-like model, but it lacks the clout of the Big 2 and its long term sustainability is suspect.

However, these weren't the first forays into online comics. One of CrossGen's many innovations was their digital comics service, known as Comics on the Web (COW). It was a subscription based service, similar to what Marvel is currently using, that allowed users to view comics online in their browser for a mere $1 a month. Unlike Marvel, CrossGen's online service had a much more up to date selection of comics and featured roughly 160 comics before the service terminated in 2002 due to the company's impending bankruptcy.

Another online component of CrossGen that is overlooked was their website, which had 'Ask the Creators" sections for fans to interact with the people working on their comics, issue-by-issue summaries (this was a time before Wikipedia was updated the minute something came out and blogs were just starting to take off, so no real up to the minute reporting on niche titles either), and various other modern day features that people take for granted.

Forge & Edge Anthology Collections

My favourite innovation from CrossGen was their anthology collections, named Forge and Edge. These high page count (~200 pages), low priced (less than $10) and ad-free anthologies collected the entire line of CrossGen comics in two affordable and high quality trades that both acted as introductions for new readers and introductions to other titles for people reading only a handful of comics.

For instance, I had heard good things about CrossGen, liked the art and concepts, but had never really read anything non-super hero at that time. Liking the look of Sojourn, The Path and the odd bit of interest in one or two other books, I picked up a copy of Edge and was immediately hooked on these books I enjoyed and, by reason of their inclusion in the low priced anthology, read other titles I had little or no interest in and was subsequently hooked on things like detective or sci-fi comics that I would never have otherwise read.

While I wouldn't have bought every comic that came out of CrossGen, I definitely read everything that was included in both Edge and Forge and became a fan of more than the one or two I would originally have picked up on a monthly basis. Add the low entry price with these anthologies and I was actually feeling bad for getting so much content I loved for such a low price.

CrossGenesis - Reborn?

With Disney's purchase of Marvel Comics last month and the fact that they own a series of comic book properties, in the form of CrossGen's intellectual properties, already, it only makes sense for Disney to roll CrossGen into Marvel. The resons for doing this are several:

1) Marvel Works With Many Former CrossGen Employees

Steve McNiven, Mark Waid, Peter David, Steve Epting, Ron Marz, Greg Land, Tony Bedard, Paul Pelletier, Butch Guice, and dozens of others have all worked for CrossGen, several starting their careers there, and now work or have working relationships with Marvel. This makes it easy to relaunch many of the properties with similar creative teams or, at the very least, to promote a new trade relaunch of older material spotlighting key talent.

2) Foster Potential Movie Properties

Back when CrossGen was at its zenith, there was all kinds of talk about television and movie projects, particularly in the case of titles like Merdian, Sojourn and the like. Disney is currently hurting for new and unique ideas for movie development and, seeing as they own CrossGen and comic properties are currently hot in Hollywood, it would make sense to revive a few of these series, see if there's any interest and possibly develop several into movie or animation projects.

3) Home For Non-Super Hero Properties

Marvel, sadly, is all about super hero comics. However, they've recently started doing literary adaptations, such as with Dark Tower, Wizard of Oz and other projects. Much like DC has Wildstorm, Vertigo and other imprints, Marvel could diversify their line with a CrossGen label for these non-super hero comics. The Icon line could be folded into this as well if they wanted.

Conclusion

I hope you all enjoyed this look back at CrossGen Comics. I have a lot of fond memories of CrossGen and it was my first foray into non-super hero comics and one of the primary reasons, along with Ultimate Spider-Man, that I got back into comics in the first place. Those $9.99 Forge and Edge anthologies were a godsend back when the budget was tight and forced me to read books I "didn't want", but ended up loving anyways that came in the same volumes as Sojourn, The Path and my other favourites.

I was truly saddened to see the company fade away and feel if they had launched a few years later, post-Ultimate Universe when comics saw a resurgence from the speculator implosion, that the company would have survived to this day and carved out quite the niche for itself. I know the affects of its practice and cultivation of talent is still felt to this day, so that is one legacy the company will have. Here's hoping Disney will revive the long dormant properties by rolling it into Marvel as a new line of comics.

What about you? Have you ever read anything from CrossGen? What were your favourite titles? Feel free to share any of your experiences or memories of the now defunct company in the comments below.

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