#crossgen comics

[stazjohnson]

Mystic. These 'convention sketch' style A4 commissions are £70+shipping' If you want one I'll only be taking orders for the next week or so, they all have to be done by the end of September. DM or email me ([email protected])if you're interested.

[theartofthecover]

Route 666 #3 (2002)

Art by: Karl Moline, John Dell and Nick Bell

[maxsindiecomics]

Negation #3 (March, 2002)

writer: Tony Bedard | penciller: Paul Pelletier | inker: David Meikis (aka Dave Meikis) | colorist: James Rochelle | letterer(s): Dave Lanphear and Troy Peteri | editor: Mark Alessi | publishing company: CrossGen Entertainment

[balu8]

Meridian #8

by Barbara Kesel; Mike Wieringo; Rob Stull; Paul mounts and Dave Lanphear

CrossGen

[the-gershomite]

Sojourn #5 -December 2001- Crossgen comics

written by Ron Marz

pencil art by Greg Land

inked by Drew Geraci

colors by Caesar Rodriguez

lettering by Dave Lamphear & Troy Peteri

cover by Greg Land, Drew Geraci & Caesar Rodriguez

[zephyrprince8]

Marvel recently put up a bunch of the early Mystic issues from CrossGen in 2000. I remember seeing these and liking the art so it's fun to see them again.

[onlylonelylatino]

Mordath by Stuart Immonen

[rantelisaliveandwell]

Let's talk about comics!

The North American comic book industry has always operated mostly on a freelance, work-for-hire basis. Writers and artists do their work in their own time from their own homes, and are paid piecemeal by publishers for the pages they produce.

On the one hand, the highly decentralized work force is kind of cool. While comics were once produced almost exclusively by people who lived in the vicinity of New York City, advances in technology mean that people all around the world can now collaborate on these things!

However, because they are all freelancers, there is no health insurance, no pension plan, no sick leave, no vacation pay, no benefits of any kind. If an artist breaks their arm and can't draw for three months, they're out of luck. No income until they can start putting out pages again.

But what if there was another way?

At the turn of the millennium, tech entrepreneur and comics fan Mark Alessi and his cousin Gina Villa founded CrossGen comics, and they were determined to do things differently.

CrossGen writers and artists were salaried employees, and all worked out of a central office space in Tampa, Florida (which for most of them meant relocating, potentially uprooting families and in some cases even immigrating to a whole new country.) They were able to recruit a mix of young up-and-comers looking for a shot at the big leagues, and industry veterans who admired the vision of their new way of doing things.

CrossGen comics were set in a shared universe, like those of Marvel and DC, but unlike the Big Two, CrossGen eschewed superheroes, focusing instead on genres like fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and horror. And they took the phrase "shared universe" pretty literally, with most of their series taking place on entirely separate PLANETS with no direct crossover between them, but all connected by the mysterious "Sigils" which kicked off the plot of each book.

They had a lot of cool ideas, and received some strong fan support, but in many ways the company was mismanaged from the beginning. I won't go into detail about that here, but Ron Marz, one of the company's primary writers throughout its existence, has shared many behind-the-scenes CrossGen stories at various outlets over the years, and I encourage you to seek them out. Suffice to say, CrossGen declared bankruptcy and ceased publishing operations in 2004, less than four years after putting out their first comics.

Their assets were purchased by Disney, who then bought Marvel a few years later, essentially putting CrossGen's intellectual property under the auspices of Marvel Comics. Marvel hasn't done much with properties since then; they put out a few miniseries reimagining CrossGen titles over a decade ago, but those never really went anywhere. This year, for the first time, Marvel finally announced that they would be publishing omnibus editions of the old CrossGen comics from the early 2000s, perhaps heralding a new era of relevance for these oft-forgotten stories (we'll see.)

And this is where I come in! A few years ago, I bought a longbox of comics on ebay, which included complete runs of CrossGen's four launch titles: Sigil, Mystic, Scion, and Meridian, as well as their first expansion title, The First.

Since then, I've only read a handful of these comics. But now, I'm gonna try and read them right through, and I'm gonna write about it! It will be a journey through a fascinating blip of early 2000s pop culture. Are they any good? Did they deserve better? We'll find out!