Crossgen Comics: Geek Life

Welcome back!  ACB’s Geek Life keeps rolling along.  For our seventeenth installment, I thought we’d take a look at something that on paper seemed to really be what the comic industry needed, but somehow, the will of the top dog in charge just wasn’t enough.  I’m talking about CrossGen Comics in its original days.  Since I have a lot to talk about here, let’s get right to it, shall we?

The Great Experiment – CrossGen Comics

CrossGen was the brainchild of entrepreneur Mark Alessi.  He was a wealthy businessman since the 1980s and a comic fan.  In 1998, he founded CrossGen Comics, a comic publisher that almost entirely existed in a shared universe.  In January 2000, CrossGenesis, the first title of the new publisher, was released and detailed some of the secret origins of this shared universe.  This universe was known as the Sigilverse because each of the protagonists bore a symbol of power, known as the Sigil.

The plan was simple.  Alessi wanted the writers and artists to work together in order to keep the shared universe idea as the backbone of each series while keeping each of the series unique in their own way.  He hired the best writers, artists, and editors from all over the comics world to ensure the highest possible quality for the stories.  It was also mandatory that every single issue was released on schedule and no work would ever be delayed.  If you wrote or drew a book that released every month on the second Wednesday, there was no excuse for that book to not be published and released on the second Wednesday of every month.

Sounds pretty simple, wasn’t it?  While on the surface, this seemed like an independent publisher that wasn’t going to fall into the traps others had in the 90s.  Image, in particular, was known for horrific delays and lack of focus from the creators, but if it was up to Alessi, CrossGen would never have these problems.  Of course, the best intentions ended up being part of the problem as a whole.

Aggressive policies, mixed with aggressive ownership and aggressive marketing, ended up leading to the downfall of CrossGen.  The first sign of trouble came in 2003.  For the first time in its history, CrossGen released a couple books late.  Then came the reports that there were financial troubles.  Less than a year later, CrossGen stopped publishing sending all of their titles into cancellation in the midst of storylines that would never be finished.  All of these things were bad enough on their own, but it would be one of the top editors of the company that would end up providing the most damning of revelations about CrossGen and Mark Alessi.

In a 2009 interview, Mark Waid revealed that Mark Alessi was one of the most cruel and short fused bosses he’d ever worked for.  He likened him to an overgrown 8-year old with a checkbook.  He told stories of verbal abuse and public humiliation.  He claimed Alessi would commonly scream until he was red in the face if only the smallest detail of the art displeased him or make grown people stand in the corner or go home for the day if he was displeased with them.  It was also known that all the writers and artists were expected to live in Tampa, where the company was located, which led to the common joke that the creators were held up in a commune of Alessi’s creation.  With all that was said or already known about Alessi and CrossGen, what originally seemed like an unfortunate end to something promising became a clouded and possibly dark ending.

What makes Waid’s comments so interesting is that they are exclusively from him.  Sure, it was known that something had to give.  Whether it was the shared universe, or the few rebranding attempts the company went through, including the final rebranding in 2003 that opened up eleven (yes, ELEVEN) companies under the young publisher’s banner, or the fact that I once ordered a t-shirt with one of their comic’s logo and a zip up hoodie with the company logo on it and never received them despite my check getting cleared, or the reports that the creators were deceived about the state of the company and later weren’t paid for their work.  Still, you didn’t hear this stuff from some of the other creators who were big or have since gotten big like Jim Cheung, Butch Guice, Tony Bedard, George Perez, Greg Land, and the list goes on.  Perhaps it’s part of Mark Waid’s personality to be truthful about what happened, or maybe he just doesn’t care about how it can sound to talk to a former boss, especially now that boss is out of the business.  Either way, I guess you could say the writing was on the wall and CrossGen was just not meant to succeed when you take all those things into account.

We could make all sorts of assumptions about what happened, but that’s not what I’m writing this article about.  What I want to remember was how good a lot of these books were.  Each title gave readers a different world and unique characters even if they were all bound by the mysterious Sigil.  While I gave each of their titles a chance, even if I didn’t read every single issue of every series, there were half dozen or so I want to specifically mention in this article.  These are the titles I want to remember CrossGen for, and not what happened with the founder or the creators’ paychecks.

My first exposure to CrossGen was back in the Summer of 2000.  Some friends of mine and I had made tradition of going to a local comic shop every Friday evening.  Yeah, I know, a group of 20-something guys spent their Friday nights going to a comic shop…  Seriously, this article IS called Geek Life afterall.  Anyway, one of those friends started buying this comic called Scion, a story that seemed to have a King Arthur like slant to it.  I didn’t know much about that series, and, frankly, didn’t really take the time to learn more about it.  The following Summer, that would all change.

Another one of those friends that went to the comic shop with me on Friday nights went with me to the 2001 WizardWorld Chicago convention.  I will go into this in much more detail in two weeks when I talk about conventions, so check back, but it was here that I truly discovered CrossGen.  It was almost as if they knew exactly how to reach people like me.  At the time, my favorite artist, George Perez, did some work for them.  That, and they had a large booth with their creators constantly sitting there for the fans to get signatures and sketches, there was always something going on at the CrossGen booth.  While spending hours on end that whole weekend waiting and hoping for a George Perez sketch (again, check back in two weeks), I go to see a lot of CrossGen promo stuff.  When I got back from the convention, it was on…  I was ready to try whatever CrossGen wanted to sell me.

Right off the bat, three of the original CrossGen titles, Sigil, Mystic, and Meridian, captured a sense of wonder in me.  Later, three more titles captured my imagination – Ruse, Sojourn, and Route 666.  Each title was very different and several of the titles by CrossGen held to a specific genre.  They were all different than the usual comic books published by the other companies.  Instead of holding to action or themes like superhero books, or more adult, or the zaniness, of other independent publishers, CrossGen could really be read by anyone of any age.  While CrossGen had a mix of established creators like Barbara Kesel, Chuck Dixon, and Mark Waid, they also featured beautiful art from artists like the aforementioned George Perez, Butch Guice, Steve Epting, and Steve McNiven.  They also featured new people like writer Tony Bedard, and artists Andrea DiVito, Greg Land, and Jim Cheung.  All of these newer writers and artists eventually went on to work for DC and Marvel on big time characters after the collapse of CrossGen.

Meridian was a classic folklore tale written by Kesel, and drawn by Joshua Middleton and, later, Steve McNiven.  The young heroine of the series was Sephie who, early on, becomes the Minister of Meridian and is blessed with a sigil on her forehead giving her powers.  Her sigil allowed her to fly, heal people, and fix things.  Meanwhile, in Meridian’s opposite kingdom, Cadador, Sephie’s uncle, Ilahn, who also held the title of Minister, was revealed to also have a sigil.  His powers were almost completely opposite of Sephie’s.  He is able to destroy things and teleport.

Meridian and Cadador were floating cities in a world that almost entirely existed in the air.  They had ships that looked like classic vessels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that navigated the skies instead of water.  Ultimately, Ilahn wanted to use his power and political standing to take over Meridian, uniting the two main floating cities and creating a huge industrial complex to, what else, make money.  Sephie sets out to stop Ilahn and turns to a life of piracy to disrupt his trade routes and ignite a sense of rebellion and uprising against the greedy and cruel Ilahn.

Of all the titles by CrossGen, Meridian ranked among my favorites.  Unlike the others, there really seemed to be a real sense of whimsy and fantasy to it.  Sephie’s view of the world seems naive at first, but as the series progressed, she grew into an intelligent young lady with a great sense of leadership.  The characters of Meridian had endearing qualities and the plot was full of adventure.  Each issue was just a lot of fun.  This is one series that I can definitely recommend to others, especially if I’m recommending the series to people who enjoy adventure over action.  Meridian was one of the properties CrossGen wanted to do more with in the form of either a motion picture or an animated series.  As much as I loved each of the series I’m talking about in this article, Meridian probably had the best chance to be the coolest animated series just because the adventure element would give the series so much room to roam in the overall story.

Another series that had an immediate effect on me was the sci-fi influenced Sigil.  Being a fan of the science fiction genre, I was thrilled by the high action style that usually contained a cliffhanger ending for each issue.  This series featured mercenaries Samandahl Rey and Roiya.  They were formerly part of the Planetary Union army, but were downsized due to cut backs.  As the series opens, the Union is at war with a race of humanoid lizards called Saurians.  Sam and Roiya meet a beautiful woman named Zanniati and her bodyguard JeMerik.  JeMerik possessed strange, glowing, orange eyes, a sign of him being a fragment of a member of a god-like species known as The First.  This member of The First, Danik, often had fragments of his being appearing as different characters in many of the series from CrossGen.

The four are attacked by a Saurian assassination squad, leaving Sam marked with a sigil, and Roiya fatally run through.  Roiya is kept in a stasis chamber on the Bitterluck, the ship Sam and Roiya use to travel space, but from this point forward, she was never revived.  Sam turned out to be the most powerful of all the Sigil-Bearers.  Sam’s powers allow him to transform matter, survive in the vacuum of space, and be basically invulnerable to energy based weapons.  This makes him kind of like the Superman of the CrossGen Sigilverse.

Sam was destined for great things in CrossGen.  He was the one chosen by The First to gather other Sigil-Bearers and organize them to fight and defeat an invasion force known as the Negation.  He often met with characters in the other titles.  One meeting in particular was when he appeared in Meridian and assisted Sephie in one of her adventures.  Just as Sam gathered the heroes and villains of the other series and prepared them for the first major crossover event at CrossGen, The Negation War, CrossGen went belly up and the conclusion was never published to the disappointment of all CrossGen fans.

The third series of the early days of CrossGen that caught my eye was Mystic.  I guess this is a perfect time to admit a particular “fetish” I have in comics.  I love female characters who wield magic.  In my opinion, Scarlet Witch and Zatanna are two of the sexiest comic characters ever.  By far.  I’m not sure what it is about these magical women.  Maybe it’s the fact that my all-time favorite celebrity crush is Melissa Joan Hart, who was famous for Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  I dunno.  Anyway, if the girl is tossing around magic, I’m sure to have a little more than a passing interest in her.  Add in Aaron Lopresti’s art (he drew several issues of the series), and you’ve got a recipe that I’m willing to take a bite out of.

Whereas Meridian was kind of a coming of age story and Sigil was flat out action oriented with a classic hero type lead, Mystic featured a lead character who was a spoiled socialite who didn’t originally want her power.  It took place on a planet where magic was a profession organized by seven different guilds.  The guilds each have a personality of it’s own.  Think of them kind of like the houses in Harry Potter.  Depending on which guild the character was in, you could guess what they would be like.

The main character was Giselle.  While Giselle partied her life away, her older sister, Genevieve, studied hard to master magic in the Nouveau Guild.  On the day of Genevieve’s ascension to the rank of Nouveau Guild Master, a process that would allow her to connect to a spirit of that guild, Giselle is granted her sigil and absorbs each of the spirits of every guild thrusting the reluctant heroine into a new world of responsibility.  She is later joined by a cat-like companion who turns out to be another part of Danik.

The main conflict in the series is between Giselle and the confined guild spirits.  The guild spirits attempt to kill Giselle, but when that fails, they free Animora, a powerful demon who established a psychic link with Giselle that eventually allowed her to possess the heroine.  When many of the guild spirits refuse to assist Giselle while she is possessed by Animora, Giselle is easily defeated by one of The First, Ingra.  The defeat at the hands of Ingra frees Giselle from Animora’s control.  Realizing she cannot simply rely on the guild spirits to assist her with magic, Giselle sets out to master each of the different styles of magic.  Because of her planet’s positioning in the universe, bombardment of cosmic rays on the planet Ciress is what leads to the usage of magic.  When Giselle receives her sigil, it augments her already naturally attuned abilities to make her use of magic even more powerful.

In later years, CrossGen released more series taking place within its shared universe.  The first of which that I was drawn to was Sojourn.  Written by Ron Marz and drawn by Greg Land, Sojourn featured another heroine in the CrossGen universe named Arwyn.  She returns from hunting one day to find her husband and child murdered by rampaging armies of Orc-like creatures under the command of Mordath, a cruel and sadistic conqueror who was recently revived.  Along with her dog, Kreeg, Arwyn meets a one-eyed rogue named Gareth and the three characters travel across “the five lands” with the mission to track down and kill Mordath.

Sojourn was one of the more interesting series from CrossGen.  None of the main heroic characters possess a sigil.  They are simply human.  The Sigil-Bearer in this series was Mordath.  Mordath’s powers include fire control and invulnerability.  He’s one of the most ruthless characters in all the CrossGen titles.  The series has a close resemblance to the world shown in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  The armies of Mordath are very similar to the Orcs seen in the movies.  Gareth has a similarity to Aragorn, and Arwyn takes her name, with a slight misspelling, to the Elven lover of Aragorn.  In a story sense, though, Sojourn kinda felt like an Earth-bound Star Wars.  Gareth definitely had a Han Solo type of vibe to him.  Kreeg, the animal sidekick, makes you think of Chewbacca because, like Han Solo’s Wookie partner, Kreeg is heroic and usually comes to the aid of Arwen and Gareth.  Mordath certainly brings to mind a combination of the Emperor and Darth Vader.  It’s a particularly interesting mix of sagas that was well crafted by Marz.

However, despite being a well written series, Sojourn did have some controversy to it.  Even though Greg Land had been part of the comic industry for several years before joining CrossGen to do Sojourn, his work on the book held a high profile which led to criticism about how he does his art.  Land is known for using photo references for his characters.  While it’s known that this has been a big part of any artist, especially in comics, it’s believed by many that Land actually uses photographs in his pages and uses a little Photoshopping to make it look drawn.  Since CrossGen’s demise, Land’s worked for Marvel where the criticism only increased.  I do appreciate Land’s work on Sojourn, but I’m not ignorant to this controversy.  I will say that the combination of the story and Land’s art did make for a fun series that was easy on the eyes.

Route 666 was CrossGen’s first venture into the horror genre.  No character in this series was revealed to own a sigil.  Instead, Cassie, the lead character of the series, did have a special talent.  Since a young age, Cassie was able to see dead people.  After a series of events similar to the movie Final Destination kills a college friend of hers, evil spirits witness her talking to the soul of her friend, sending her down a path where she would not only be haunted but also hunted by these spirits.  After spending time in a mental institution, she realizes there’s a larger conspiracy at play.  There’s a battle going on for souls between in the “next world”.  Cassie ultimately escapes, but gets many murders in her hometown pinned on her.

Throughout her travels, she does come across a small town sheriff.  Cassie’s demons follow her and through more series of bad luck situations, causes the death of the sheriff’s son.  While Cisco, the sheriff, has every right to blame Cassie for the death of his son, he actually becomes more of a father figure to her.  This adds an unexpected level to the story as Cisco ends up being Cassie’s biggest supporter when she is unable to find anyone else to help her.

What made this series very cool was the world Route 666 exists in is based on the simpler, more conservative 1950s in America.  There are references to a Cold War-like confrontation between Cassie’s country, The United States of Empyrean, and a Communist nation known as The People’s Republic of Rodina.  The cars resemble the classic cruisers of the mid-50s.  The next-worlders posing as monsters in the physical world resemble b-movie monsters.  So the monsters might seem odd to be considered so powerful and menacing, but they fit right in with the world created by writer Tony Bedard.  Between the story, the backdrop, and the visuals provided by Karl Moline, Route 666 was just a fun title that occasionally shocked you with a particularly gruesome scene here and there.

By far, my favorite CrossGen title was Mark Waid and Butch Guice’s Ruse.  Ruse starred a Sherlock Holmes inspired character named Simon Archard.  Like Holmes, Archard exists in a Victorian era world, but with a twist.  He lived in the city Partington on the planet Arcadia.  Despite the visage of late 1800s London, Partington often had flying creatures resembling dragons circling the skyline and a fair number of magical happenings going on.  While Simon was not a Sigil-Bearer himself, he did have a tie tack of the sigil.  Simon was the world’s most famous detective and was often called upon to solve mysteries.

Simon’s partner, Emma Bishop, was a beautiful and highly intelligent character who was often a step ahead of Simon, but was never given credit.  While we never saw it, we were led to believe she was a Sigil-Bearer, or at least a part of one of The First.  For nearly the entire series, Emma concealed her powers, but finally revealed them in the final issue of the series.  Simon claimed he knew of her powers from the very beginning of their partnership, but I can’t help but to believe he was only saving face when he found out about her abilities.  While Emma was more approachable and a kinder person, Simon tended to be a colder person.  He wasn’t a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he never liked to not be the smartest, or most recognizable, person in a room.  Simon’s character was very complex because no matter how he felt inside, he always showed a side that was supremely confident and never frightened or unsure of himself.  It was kind of like mixing an element of James Bond to the Sherlock Holmes character.  Then, combined with Emma, the two main characters shared a seemingly platonic relationship that maybe was a little more than that depending on the reader.

The main antagonist was Miranda Cross.  At first, she just seemed to be a beautiful Baroness.  As the issues come and go, it’s shown that she is purely evil and not of Arcadia.  She proves to be a major foe to Simon and Emma and possesses powers that might even be greater than Emma’s.  Ultimately, it’s believed that Miranda might have been a member of the Negation, scouting and working on plans in advance of their invasion, but that was never confirmed.  In the end, Ruse was a perfect mixture of the CrossGen creativity and the steampunk sensibilities that have nearly created an entire genre of its own over the past couple decades.  I cannot recommend another CrossGen title over Ruse.

There are many other titles from CrossGen that I could conceivably discuss, but these six, in particular, were among my favorites.  These are also probably the most accessible to many readers because of their genres and subject matter.  However, one of the most unfortunate things about the collapse of CrossGen is that it’s a very expensive venture to get into the game right now as of the publish date of this article.  Many trades are out there from CrossGen and you should be able to find them at a decent price, but none of them cover all the issues from each series.  That means that if you do decide to read CrossGen comics, you might need to either find individual issues (which probably still don’t go for much less than $3 an issue), or find download sites from trusted sources.

This might change in the coming months.  At the 2010 ComicCon International event, Marvel teased the crowd by having an advertisement bearing only the familiar sigil and the year 2011.  A few weeks later, the news that Marvel would be bringing back some of the titles in the CrossGen universe hit the web and got many fans excited and wondering what titles would return.  We also wondered if it would be a complete redux, a continuation, or reimagine the series.  Now it’s known that the series returning would be Sigil and Ruse.  Sigil looks to be a reimagining with a female character named Samantha Rey (as opposed to Samadahl Rey in the original series), but Ruse is again being written by Mark Waid, so it’s likely to be more of a reboot.  I can only imagine of these two miniseries are successful, Marvel will likely explore more stories from CrossGen and continue these two series.

CrossGen was a fun publisher.  Maybe it wasn’t so fun behind the scenes, but the company’s imaginative worlds, characters, and stories proved that independent comic publishers didn’t have to abide by purely adult themes, mondo action, or ridiculous physiques and attitudes.  While some may argue that the shared universe wasn’t a good idea, I rather enjoyed it.  I also understand that if there was anything leading to the demise of the company, outside the actions of the person in charge, I’m sure constantly pushing new series didn’t help the financial side.

CrossGen may be returning to your local comic shop, but as elated as I am for the return, I’m also prepared to not have the same feelings as I did ten years ago when everything was new and exciting and a pure adventure to dive right into.  So, raise your glasses to the stories that were never completed and the loose ends that never were tied.  You don’t have to toast Alessi, but you have to toast the stories that made CrossGen so much fun.

Join me in two weeks when I talk about Conventions!  Yes, that special trip many comic fans make on a yearly basis will be the topic of Geek Life’s eighteenth episode.  I’ll share with you the feelings I have whenever I stand at the entrance of the convention center because I’m sure almost every other attendee have had those feelings too.  Oh!  And make sure you check back because I will be sharing with you a very exciting announcement in the next article!

To find out more about what this series of articles are all about check out What is Geek Life? To see what other topics I’ve written about, check out the Geek Life tag!

Tags: Butch Guice Crossgen Comics Geek Life George Perez Mark Waid Tony Bedard