THOR’S COMIC COLUMN 3/11/11

Yeah, a lot of people seem to forget that the Marvel Universe happened more or less as a happy accident, when a company riding a rising ecomonic tide exploded with new books and characters and began cross-promoting them; it's not till fanboys like Roy Thomas became pros themselves that the idea of forcing the Marvel U into something coheren tand integrated took hold (and, eventually, DC followed suit). But creating one out of whole cloth hasn't worked for companies like Dark Horse, either.

As Adam indicates in his review, Crossgen had some interesting stuff on the periphery of their core universe (Along with Ruse and Way of the Rat, there was Abadazad, The Path, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Crossovers, and El Cazador), and the artwork was invariably of the highest order (I'd single out Mike Ploog's Abadazad, Butch Guice on Ruse, Steve McNiven on Meridian, and Steve Epting's too-brief tenure on El Cazador).

Their biggest problem was that, despite their "no capes" stance, their core books weren't really much different from your typical cosmic superhero stories, and that way too many of the titles (The Path, Sojourn, etc.) were ongoing "quests" that meant that every issue had to find some incremental way to move the story forward, but never really get to resolution.

But I suppose that Disney figured that as long as they owned the IP, might as well see if they can make a few bucks off it. I'll admit that I'm intrigued to see the revived Ruse with co-creator Mark Waid writing again.

And Sigil starts right off the bat by bringing in El Cazador, which, if I'm not mistaken, was one of their biggest sellers.

It's funny, I'd always thought of CrossGen as a failure, but in researching it for this review, it looks as though they did better than I thought. Several of their books ran for upwards of 40 issues, Ruse and Way of the Rat both lasted to 26 and 24, respectively. I guess you could argue that that was a product of ambition rather than success, that they kept going past the point when more cautious publishers would have reined it in, but still, there's an impressive volume of output there. As I touched on in my review, I wonder if they were more a victim of the then-moribund industry rather than being a failure in and of themselves. Of course, there's that legendary Mark Waid interview at AICN where he calls out the company's creator for being a ginormous douche, basically Comic Book Guy with a fat wallet, so I imagine it wasn't the most well-run company.

I am sort of intrigued and want to read more about their output now. I remember reading Ruse and Route 666 and enjoying both, and what I saw of Way of the Rat looked like a lot of fun. Heck, the sheer number of cosmic SF/fantasy/pseudo-superhero books is sort of neat, and they still seem to have their fans. Jeb does seem to have a point, though: it looks like the company spent too much time building an intricate mythology first, when it was the quirkier, less fanboyish books that came along a bit later that would have provided a solid sales base. Probably.

At any rate, I'm interested to see where Marvel/Disney goes with this. So far they've only announced Sigil and Ruse, and I'd guess Abadazad will probably make an appearance. It sorta looks like they're going to combine a lot of the books into Sigil, which makes sense, but I hope they have room for a couple of other titles, like Way of the Rat and Kiss Kiss Bang. Also, I'd like to get my hands on some of the trades of the previous incarnation now.

Whoop, a little poking around reveals that Mystic and Route 666 are both coming back too. Neat.

There's a decent, if somewhat out-of-date, article here as well.

The fact that Waid left so early probably says a lot, but evidently a large part of what Crossgen spent its money on was trying to recreate something like the glory days of the Marvel Bullpen, with at least a large portion of the talent moving to Florida and working as fulltime employees, with medical benefits and such. Which sounds like a great idea, but which could also mean that their cost of production was just too high to sustain, even had the books sold well.

Another good entry guys. Have to say Jeb, that Punisher review as spot-on. As much as I'm digging Aaron's run, he seems to be running into the same brick wall as most of the current Punisher writers in regards to Frank as a character. Ennis' run offered the definitive take on Frank's background, and unlike many of Marvel's characters Franks origins seem inextricably linked to a particular period, which makes a reboot tough without stripping away the elements that keep Castle from being just a nut with a gun. It sort of leaves Aaron between the proverbial rock and hard place, as he either offers yet another permutation on the formula, or tries to shoehorn in some character development ala the mainstream title (and by character development I mean something stupid like killing of his family again). While I still think there are good Punisher stories to be told, I can't help but feel that the character's shelf-life is rapidly approaching.