Post by Dizzy D on Apr 1, 2015 9:28:35 GMT -5
I've been rereading these the past few weeks (also there was a sale on backissues going on at one of my local comicshops and I picked up a few Crossgen titles there). It has been over 10 years now since Crossgen went into bankruptcy, so time for a bit on them on the Classic Comics forum. I got relatively late into Crossgen, during 2003 when I stayed in the US. CBRers Jack, FBHthelizardmage and Anon (among others) were reading Crossgen at the time and recommended some titles to me. I started following several titles and soon Crossgen went bankrupt. Coincidence?
History:
Back in 1998 IT-millionaire Mark Alessi founded the company Crossgen. It took 2 years of planning, but in 2000 the first comics came out. Planned out by Alessi, Gina Villa, Ron Marz, Brandon Peterson and Barbara Kesel, the first 4 main series all had a similar origin, but a different genre (A fifth series had standalone stories to flesh out the Crossgen universe). Officially none of the Crossgen titles were superhero titles, but the definition of superhero is fluid and several characters would definitely fit into my definition of superheroes (more below). At the end there were several licensed titles (Masters of the Universe, Lady Death) and creator-owned titles (Abadazad) published by Crossgen as well.
The company had few freelancers, instead most writers and artists were full employees and they had a central office/studio (yes, a real world Marvel Bullpen in the 21st century). Financial mismanagement plagued Crossgen though and Crossgen ended in bankruptcy in 2004, midway through the publication of the series Negation War, which was supposed to be the culmination of their long-running backstory.
Most of the rights owned by Crossgen (excluding Lady Death, which reverted to Brian Pullido I believe?) were picked up Disney in the bankruptcy sale. J. M. De Matteis and Mike Ploog’s Abadazad was continued for a bit as illustrated novels instead of comics. Checkers did collect a few of the uncollected Crossgen issues and put out some trades, but Checkers itself went out of business. Marvel did an attempt to revive the Crossgen series (Mark Waid got a chance to return to Ruse, Mike Carey did Sigil and G. Willow Wilson did Mystic), but sales were low and the further revivals were stopped. So at the moment it seems that Crossgen properties are dead for good, but who nows what will happen in the future.
Writers:
Ron Marz and Barbara Kesel were involved as writers since the beginning. They were joined by big name writers Mark Waid and Chuck Dixon. Tony Bedard had been working in comics for a while, but was still a relative unknown when he started working for Crossgen. He quickly became one of its promising stars (and IMHO his Marvel and DC work since never really got on that level.). Ian Edginton was a known name in the UK, working on 2000 AD and had done some US work (co-authoring with Warren Ellis several times) when he joined Crossgen. Finally, though not part of the main stable of writers, J. M. De Matteis creator-owned series Abadazad was published through Crossgen.
Artists:
There were quite a few more artist than writers: Brandon Peterson was mentioned above. Veterans included Steve Epting, Jackson Guice and George Perez. Greg Land had done Birds of Prey before, but for Sojourn, he changed his style to heavily photo-referenced work (more below.. and more on that on the rest of the web as well). Bart Sears was known for his work on the Justice League Europe and XO-Manowar and did The First in his regular style but changed his style for the samurai-series The Path (also more below). Jim Cheung, Mike Perkins, Joshua Middleton, Steve McNiven and Paul Pelletier got their start at Crossgen (or in some cases got their American breakthrough at Crossgen). Ben Lai was one of the first Crossgen artists, but I haven’t seen much of his work around, so I don’t know where he ended up. Mike Ploog did creator-owned work on Abadazad . There may have been more artists around, but I think these are the main ones.
The good:
- Availability: Crossgen made sure that people could get their titles and that backissues were not a problem:
o Trades were pretty much guaranteed to come out relatively soon after the issues (until the financial problems). (At this point both Marvel and DC were rather slow with releasing trades and you never knew for sure whether a series would get a trade).
o They put out Edge and Forge, two anthology series (or rather compendia) that reprinted the single issues that come out a few months before at low prices.
o They introduced Travellers, trades that were pocket sized instead of full sized.
o But most importantly, they introduced Comics on the Web, where you could read all the Crossgen issues online.
- A lot of different settings to make each title different from the rest. At a time where most series were superheroes, it was a nice to have a company publishing non-superhero stuff (though there was still some superhero in there.. probably to ease the Marvel, DC and Image fans in.)
The bad:
- The connected universe: it worked for some titles (Crux and Negation had the connected universe as a vital part of the story) and the let up on all titles needing a Sigil-bearer once they got a few titles out. But otitles like Ruse, Way of the Rat and Route666 never needed the links to the overall myth to work and placing Earth-historical settings on non-Earth worlds didn’t really work. I think Mark Waid thinks so too, because for the Ruse revival at Marvel, he just put the story in historical England. Their last title, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, was noticeable for actually being set on Earth in the past (1960s/1970s) while officially still being part of the larger universe (not that you’d notice from the story itself)
- The aforementioned financial problems. Ron Marz was pretty positive on his time with Crossgen, but still lost $4000 dollars and he admits that he was one of the lucky ones. Most other employees lost more than that. Ian Edginton nearly lost his house (Crossgen owed him months of backpay while he was under exclusive contract).
- The price: Crossgen titles were more expensive compared to other comics published at the time. Single issues were $2.95 at a time where most Marvel and DC titles were $2.25 or $2.50. Trades were expensive though, going for $19.95 for collections of six issues was quite a bit higher than most trades coming out at that time. Of course, comics on the web, Travellers and the Anthology series were very cheap compared to what else was out there.
- Rapid expansion of the titles; while I liked quite a few of Crossgen’s titles, they rapidly increased the amount of titles they were putting out. Combine that with the high price and you can see why new customers could feel overwhelmed, especially if there are all these links between various series.
- Mark Alessi had some … problems in handling people. He had a very distinct view of what things should be and handling differing opinions was not his strong suit. Ron Marz tells how he storms out one of the first meetings after Marz critiques one of his ideas. (Alessi did return the following day to apologize, because Marz was doing exactly what he was hired for.) Stories by Waid on Alessi are far less kind, telling how Alessi was shouting at artists because their drawings were not including enough detail or didn’t match what Alessi was picturing in his head. Work that was absolutely fine according to Waid.
Upcoming: The Crossgen Universe: Sigils, Ligis, Orange Eyes and Others. Also: the first titles (not to be confused with the title The First).
History:
Back in 1998 IT-millionaire Mark Alessi founded the company Crossgen. It took 2 years of planning, but in 2000 the first comics came out. Planned out by Alessi, Gina Villa, Ron Marz, Brandon Peterson and Barbara Kesel, the first 4 main series all had a similar origin, but a different genre (A fifth series had standalone stories to flesh out the Crossgen universe). Officially none of the Crossgen titles were superhero titles, but the definition of superhero is fluid and several characters would definitely fit into my definition of superheroes (more below). At the end there were several licensed titles (Masters of the Universe, Lady Death) and creator-owned titles (Abadazad) published by Crossgen as well.
The company had few freelancers, instead most writers and artists were full employees and they had a central office/studio (yes, a real world Marvel Bullpen in the 21st century). Financial mismanagement plagued Crossgen though and Crossgen ended in bankruptcy in 2004, midway through the publication of the series Negation War, which was supposed to be the culmination of their long-running backstory.
Most of the rights owned by Crossgen (excluding Lady Death, which reverted to Brian Pullido I believe?) were picked up Disney in the bankruptcy sale. J. M. De Matteis and Mike Ploog’s Abadazad was continued for a bit as illustrated novels instead of comics. Checkers did collect a few of the uncollected Crossgen issues and put out some trades, but Checkers itself went out of business. Marvel did an attempt to revive the Crossgen series (Mark Waid got a chance to return to Ruse, Mike Carey did Sigil and G. Willow Wilson did Mystic), but sales were low and the further revivals were stopped. So at the moment it seems that Crossgen properties are dead for good, but who nows what will happen in the future.
Writers:
Ron Marz and Barbara Kesel were involved as writers since the beginning. They were joined by big name writers Mark Waid and Chuck Dixon. Tony Bedard had been working in comics for a while, but was still a relative unknown when he started working for Crossgen. He quickly became one of its promising stars (and IMHO his Marvel and DC work since never really got on that level.). Ian Edginton was a known name in the UK, working on 2000 AD and had done some US work (co-authoring with Warren Ellis several times) when he joined Crossgen. Finally, though not part of the main stable of writers, J. M. De Matteis creator-owned series Abadazad was published through Crossgen.
Artists:
There were quite a few more artist than writers: Brandon Peterson was mentioned above. Veterans included Steve Epting, Jackson Guice and George Perez. Greg Land had done Birds of Prey before, but for Sojourn, he changed his style to heavily photo-referenced work (more below.. and more on that on the rest of the web as well). Bart Sears was known for his work on the Justice League Europe and XO-Manowar and did The First in his regular style but changed his style for the samurai-series The Path (also more below). Jim Cheung, Mike Perkins, Joshua Middleton, Steve McNiven and Paul Pelletier got their start at Crossgen (or in some cases got their American breakthrough at Crossgen). Ben Lai was one of the first Crossgen artists, but I haven’t seen much of his work around, so I don’t know where he ended up. Mike Ploog did creator-owned work on Abadazad . There may have been more artists around, but I think these are the main ones.
The good:
- Availability: Crossgen made sure that people could get their titles and that backissues were not a problem:
o Trades were pretty much guaranteed to come out relatively soon after the issues (until the financial problems). (At this point both Marvel and DC were rather slow with releasing trades and you never knew for sure whether a series would get a trade).
o They put out Edge and Forge, two anthology series (or rather compendia) that reprinted the single issues that come out a few months before at low prices.
o They introduced Travellers, trades that were pocket sized instead of full sized.
o But most importantly, they introduced Comics on the Web, where you could read all the Crossgen issues online.
- A lot of different settings to make each title different from the rest. At a time where most series were superheroes, it was a nice to have a company publishing non-superhero stuff (though there was still some superhero in there.. probably to ease the Marvel, DC and Image fans in.)
The bad:
- The connected universe: it worked for some titles (Crux and Negation had the connected universe as a vital part of the story) and the let up on all titles needing a Sigil-bearer once they got a few titles out. But otitles like Ruse, Way of the Rat and Route666 never needed the links to the overall myth to work and placing Earth-historical settings on non-Earth worlds didn’t really work. I think Mark Waid thinks so too, because for the Ruse revival at Marvel, he just put the story in historical England. Their last title, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, was noticeable for actually being set on Earth in the past (1960s/1970s) while officially still being part of the larger universe (not that you’d notice from the story itself)
- The aforementioned financial problems. Ron Marz was pretty positive on his time with Crossgen, but still lost $4000 dollars and he admits that he was one of the lucky ones. Most other employees lost more than that. Ian Edginton nearly lost his house (Crossgen owed him months of backpay while he was under exclusive contract).
- The price: Crossgen titles were more expensive compared to other comics published at the time. Single issues were $2.95 at a time where most Marvel and DC titles were $2.25 or $2.50. Trades were expensive though, going for $19.95 for collections of six issues was quite a bit higher than most trades coming out at that time. Of course, comics on the web, Travellers and the Anthology series were very cheap compared to what else was out there.
- Rapid expansion of the titles; while I liked quite a few of Crossgen’s titles, they rapidly increased the amount of titles they were putting out. Combine that with the high price and you can see why new customers could feel overwhelmed, especially if there are all these links between various series.
- Mark Alessi had some … problems in handling people. He had a very distinct view of what things should be and handling differing opinions was not his strong suit. Ron Marz tells how he storms out one of the first meetings after Marz critiques one of his ideas. (Alessi did return the following day to apologize, because Marz was doing exactly what he was hired for.) Stories by Waid on Alessi are far less kind, telling how Alessi was shouting at artists because their drawings were not including enough detail or didn’t match what Alessi was picturing in his head. Work that was absolutely fine according to Waid.
Upcoming: The Crossgen Universe: Sigils, Ligis, Orange Eyes and Others. Also: the first titles (not to be confused with the title The First).
