Geek Syndicate
COMIC REVIEW - Crossed Volume 1
Ennis & Burrows. The setting is a world in which a mysterious event has spawned “The Crossed”. These are seemingly normal people infected with some sort of virus, or similar ailment, which has two main effects. Firstly their faces break out into hideous rash/scarring/festering boils in the shape of a cross (hence the name), that’s actually the good news though as at least that makes it easier to see who will be experiencing the latter symptom. The Crossed are the absolute pit of humanity, they are sadistic hedonism personified... if it brings them pleasure then they’ll do it: Rape, murder, torture, gluttony and the very worst acts in between. Given the choice between fighting zombies and The Crossed, you’d pick zombies any day of the week. Our central character is Stan, he’s a bit of a nobody and the everyman who we follow from the moment when sat in his favourite diner, the world goes to hell. He’s gathered up by Cindy, who is frighteningly competent and is doggedly doing whatever is necessary to protect her son Patrick. Along the way they gain and lose other members of the group, sometimes due to The Crossed and sometimes due to their own stupidity. Throughout they’re heading to Alaska, where they hope to find respite from what America has become. Crossed is something that I’d seen in the solicitations but had never tried, gore really isn’t my thing. But when the opportunity came up to review it for Geek Syndicate I couldn’t resist for exactly that reason. This wasn’t my sort of book at all, and whilst I’m a fan of some of Ennis’s work and enjoyed Burrows’s work in Absolution and 303 I was expecting this to be a challenge. Was it? Yes and no. Graphically (in both senses) it’s as extreme a comic as I’ve ever read, this is the only time I’ve consciously had to hide a comic from my five year old son and there are certainly some stomach-turning pages. Despite this, and perhaps because of the recent zombie zeitgeist, I clicked with the story straight away and thoroughly enjoyed it. The universe is harsh. When people do stupid things they’re punished and because of the extremity of the book they really get punished. I’m going to talk about the elephant in the room, The Walking Dead, for a moment. The big difference that struck me between these two series is the way in which all the characters degenerate within Crossed felt far more realistic. Maybe I’ve got a low opinion of humanity but the way the central characters in The Walking Dead continue to act to a moral code from “before” and seem immune to the harrowing effects of deep psychological trauma feels far less human than what we get in Crossed. By the end of these issues Stan and Cindy are horribly broken people, capable of acts which are barely discernible from The Crossed. The book is not without its faults. The timeline felt a lit-
Writer: Garth Ennis Art: Jacen Burrows Publisher: Avatar Press
The Blurb:
In the blink of an eye, humanity is lost, and the Crossed are upon us. Men, women, and children alike fall victim to the mystery infection that makes killers out of parents and rapists out of lovers. The world’s been overrun by sadistic homicidal maniacs. A small band of survivors crosses what’s left of America, in constant danger an