Crossgen Tales #1 cover detail

The Marvel/CrossGen Saga Gets Stranger and Stranger

They’re baaaaaaaaack….

CrossGen published its first book in 2000. They folded in 2004.

Disney picked up the empty husk of the company in 2004.

Disney bought Marvel in 2009.

Marvel, having scooped up most of the creators in the wake of the CrossGen implosion, published two CrossGen mini-series, “Ruse” and “Meridian”, in 2011. A third, “Mystic”, debuted later in the year. Two more were put on the schedule but never released. Marvel cited a lack of interest from the earlier mini-series.

It’s been silent on that front ever since.

Until now!

But Marvel’s latest move makes no sense whatsoever. Unless….

The CrossGen Starter Pack

Crossgen Tales #1 cover

Marvel announced this week their plan to publish “CrossGen Tales” #1, collecting the first issues of “Ruse,” ” Sojourn,” “Mystic”, and “Sigil” into one oversized comic or thin trade paperback. Not sure which.

The only way this makes sense to me is if Disney is protecting its trademark, which is something Bleeding Cool is thinking, as well. There are plenty of stories of one-shots and mini-series with random characters being greenlit because the publisher needs to be seen as an active user of the trademark.

I’m not enough of a legal eagle to know if that’s the way the math works out on this one. But it’s the only thing that makes sense.

No, Seriously, What Else Could It Be?

Play this out in your mind. If this book proves successful, what do you do next?

  1. Publish “CrossGen Tales” #2, with the second issues of those four comics. Anthologies don’t sell in North America. Nobody is going to continue with this scheme. (CrossGen kinda sorta did this with “Forge” and “Edge” back in the day.)
  2. Publish “CrossGen Tales” #2, with the first issues of “Scion”, “The First,” “Crux”, and “Negation”. Then you can put “Route 666”, “Way of the Rat,” “The Path”, and “Meridian” in the third. Finish it off with the fourth book and “Brath”, “Chimera”, “El Cazador”, and “CrossGen Chronicles”. (George Perez!) If things prove super popular, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” leads off the fifth volume, with “Solus”, “The Negation War”, and something else….
  3. Publish a trade with the first six issues of the series that proves the most popular from “CrossGen Tales” #1. Annoy the people who then are paying twice for the first issue of the series.

My biggest question mark about the current plan, though, is why they aren’t publishing “Scion” #1 in that first book. C’mon — it’s Jim Cheung art! You’d think that would be the first thing they’d want to publish here.

But maybe they’re not trying to protect that trademark.

What I’d Like to See

If I may do a bit of fan daydreaming here, I know what I’d like to see.

First, the ship has sailed. The creators have moved on. The CrossGen Universe was ahead of its time in many ways and paid a big price for that. (They had digital comics on the web in 2001!) Its publishing program was brilliant and many of their books were some of the most entertaining comic titles of their day. The depth of the creator bench at the company was overwhelming, and many people made their names there, like Jim Cheung, Steve McNiven, and Justin Ponsor. Not taking anything away from the likes of Laura Martin, Steve Epting, Butch Guice, Greg Land, Mark Wait, Ron Marz, etc. but they already had meaningful careers before CrossGen. Their profiles were certain boosted from their time and output there, though.

So, what to do with all these comics?

I’ll sound like a broken record here, I know, but I’d love to see oversized hardcover collections of the titles. Give me the library editions to put on my bookshelves for at least the first 24 issues or so of the series that lasted that long. Plus, one for “El Cazador.”

That’s all I want — a bookshelf with all the amazing art reproduced in the best way possible from “Scion”, “Crux,” “Sojourn,” “The Path”, “Way of the Rat”, “Meridian”, “CrossGen Chronicles”, etc.

Oh, and for the love of god, give me the “Ruse” book that’s formatted like the “300” hardcover book so that all the double page spreads are one double wide page each.

Maybe — just maybeyou can bring the original creators back to do an “Annual” of sorts to finish out their stories, if they so wish, as a bonus. Not necessary, though.

Unfortunately, this is Marvel, whose book program is notoriously not-the-best. They’re print it on see-through paper and never restock a thing and probably underprint it in the first place as a hedge against low sales somehow.

In other words, don’t get too excited by “CrossGen Tales” #1, aside from the momentary pang of nostalgia many of us feel for the company. I still have a very heavy longbox full of all of those issues I picked up the first time around. I have no intentions of purging them…


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2 Comments

  1. I do remember how Marvel botched the absorption of the Malibu characters a while back, started fine, some marvel staples stranded in another universe, Black Knight, etc. They had some great characters there too, Rune by BWS, Prime by Norm Breyfogle, for a time there was even a seventh infinity gem, remember that ? and then poof, gone.
    With CrossGen I got late to jump on the bandwagon, they already tried to catch a second wave of readers at the time with anthology titles Forge and Edge, I still have a couple of volumes of each, here on my shelves, from a bargain bin. why not carry on with those titles rather than restart under a new moniker ?
    While the Malibu characters seemed fresh enough, the impression I had from reading the first few issues of those CrossGen titles was a general ¯_(ツ)_/¯, despite being driven by respectable pros. felt like run-of-the mill, nothing groundbreaking. Was any of that creator-owned ? Even partially ? What kept Waid and al. from taking the stories elsewhere ? I seemed to remember the business model was a bit like Image, but maybe my memory’s faulty.

  2. I hadn’t seen this news. Thanks for the heads up!

    I’d love to see some nice CrossGen graphic novels, but geez, I’d be happy if they could just put the entire library of CrossGen comics up on digital platforms to purchase. These are some of the best comics from my lifetime and I would love more people to have an opportunity to read and enjoy them.