Garth Ennis - Crossed

[andydecker]

Crossed - written by Garth Ennis, artwork by Jacen Burrows (Avatar Press, 2008, 10 issues)

Jacen Burrows

Crossed was created by British comic writer Garth Ennis, the creator of Preacher. Published by the American Avatar Press, a no censorship, anything goes publisher (especially adult themed horror), it was at first a self-contained series.

The premise is simple: a pandemic transforms the diseased into homicidal maniacs. Or in the words of the creator Garth Ennis: "The Crossed are people who – through infection – have given in to the absolute worst instincts that human beings can: murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, all of the most cruel and inventive kind imaginable."

Easily recognizable by the cross-shaped rash on the face - hence the title - that is the basic plot. In the tradition of the post-apocalyptic survivalist story, in this comic you have your typical group of thrown-together survivors trying to find some place wherre they can, well, survive. It is a typical Garth Ennis comic. It is mostly people talking when they don't get slaugthered by the Crossed, who feel pain only as lust,  or are killing themselves.

Artwise, there is often more gore and every kind of violence on the page than in many splatter movies. Hence the tame scan.

The series sold very well, but Ennis claimed that he hadn't any idea how to continue this. He gave Avatar his consent to continue it. After a few min-series they did Crossed: Badlands. Here ever-changing writer/artist teams did two to six part stories. It ran from 2012 to 2016 and stopped publishing with # 100. As usual for the time every issue had multiple covers (mostly 5 variants, the regular cover, the torture cover, etc), often depicting as over the top violence as imaginable. While the stories are basically just more of the same survivalist and body horror - imagine an illustrated Pan without ANY restrictions imposed on what you can show on the page or not - , a few of the early arcs had some good plots and were well written.

There even was kind of a sequel  called Crossed + 100 in 2014, created by Alan Moore. It took the story 100 years into the future. The series ran for 18 issues.

Crossed was one of the most violent and gory horror comics on the market and is avaiable in collections and digital.

[pbsplatter]

I read a bunch of this years ago, although it very quickly lapsed into shock value brutality. Still there were some high points; any of the stories that Si Spurrier or Garth Ennis wrote were generally worthwhile, and I have a soft spot for the excesses of the David Lapham stories.