Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

Crossed: Badlands #1 - 3

"Looking back on it now, I can see the mistake we made was in putting all our hopes in the child."

Ian Cowley used to be a married man, one that owned and operated a bookstore in Glasgow, Scotland.  That was before the Crossed, though.  Now Ian is struggling to survive and, through trial and error, he has learned that the surest way to do that is to move quickly, avoid large groups, and stay very, very quiet.

Nonetheless Ian finds himself a part of a noisome group that is moving slower and slower, because Anya, the lone female member, is pregnant and about to give birth.  Because the group keeps moving slower and slower, that means the pack of indefatigable Crossed that are pursuing them keeps inching closer and closer.

Each Crossed story has examined, in its own unique way, a particular section of the human condition.  The first Crossed was about the need, or the desire, for love, more or less.  The title of the second Crossed stated its theme outright: Family Values.  Crossed 3D was about the necessity of hope and Crossed: Psychopath was all about madness.  The first story of Badlands, an ongoing Crossed anthology series, is all about team building.

Ian, the story's narrator, despite having figured out that the best way to survive involved leaving "being like people in the past," cannot break himself free of the need to be part of a group, a herd, or a pack.  Although Ian has come to understand that "organizing armed resistance" and "sorting out who'd run the pack" means certain death, he still finds himself "looking for someone" to tell him what to do.  This duality robs him of the courage of conviction.

When Ian comes to the realization that the group's situation is hopeless, that the time has come for them to redefine what constitutes humanity in order to better their chances for survival, he still clings to the old way of being human.  He confronts the group, telling them that they should leave Anya and her brother Mark behind.  When most, but not all, of the group balks, Ian puts it up for a needless and doomed from the start group vote.  Instead of just heading out with whoever will go with him, Ian manuevers himself into a situation where he is made to stay with the group.  Despite knowing full well that to do so means, at best, certain death or, at worst, becoming a member of an entirely different kind of pack.

The best thing about all the Crossed stories that I have read so far is that I have not been able to figure out how they are going to end, or what will happen next.  I don't know who will live, who will die, and who will become Crossed.  I also need to point out that I do not know which of the three possible fates could be considered the worst.  It varies from story to story, from character to character, from situation to situation.  That keeps the series fresh and fascinating, and it also guarantees that I will keep reading Crossed for as long as they stay that way.

Crossed: Psychopath #1 - 7 (of 7)

"If we don't help each other, we're not human anymore."

A small group of survivors discover a wounded and uninfected stranger.  Although there are those in the group that do not want a fifth wheel added to their quartet, the stranger does prove to be useful in the tracking department.

The stranger also tells them of a secret mission, of a group of Special Operatives and Scientists that are working on a cure for the Crossed Plague.  He promises to lead them to this place, in exchange for protection, company, and food and water.  The group agrees, but will soon regret that decision.

For the stranger has lied to them.  There is no mission.  He is actually tracking a particular pack of Crossed.

He is also a deranged and murderous psychopath... 

In Crossed: Family Values writer David Lapham showed how some supposed "normal people" were not all that different from the Crossed they were battling.  He argued (much in the same manner that Grant Morrison did in the first Crossed story) that there was no real difference between so-called "normal people" and the Crossed.  Reading the various Crossed stories, it becomes easy for me to picture the fatigued George Smiley saying "We're not so different, you and I" to one of the Crossed, rather than an enemy spy.  It is also very easy for me to see the insane Dr. Logan gesturing at one of the Crossed and declaring, "They are us!"

And we are them.

Crossed: Psychopath rubs the reader's face in that very dark and unpleasant truth, good and hard.  I have to say that Psychopath is the darkest, meanest, nastiest, and most disturbing Crossed story yet.  It is so dark, so mean, so nasty, and so disturbing that it is difficult for me to collect my thoughts and describe why I would like and recommend something as unsettling as Crossed: Psychopath.

There has never been a shortage of warped and deviant behavior in any of the Crossed stories.  Nothing, nothing at all, is taboo.  All boundaries are erased.  The Crossed carry out acts of sex, torture, defilement, and slaughter with unrestrained glee.  They are truly terrifying monsters.

But the Crossed pale in comparison to the human monster that is Harold Lorre, the narrator and titular pyschopath of this particular story.  Lorre is everything that the Crossed are.  He is every bit as deviant, brutal, twisted, delighting in torture, smart, and murderous.  The difference between the two is that Lorre isn't infected.  He's just a "garden variety" psychotic in a world gone deliriously psychotic.  But that won't stop him from chasing his delusional fantasies and indulging his warped desires.

I think that is what makes Crossed: Psychopath so riveting and disturbing.  We follow a dangerous and lethal wolf, clothed as the meekest and gentlest of sheep, into the trusting fold of survivors and then watch him mercilessly torture, rape, and kill both men and women, while hunting down the pack that stole his only "pure" victim, for seven whole issues.  By the end of the story you might, like Amanda, argue that becoming Crossed would be something akin to an escape from what has to be one of the darkest, nastiest, and most disturbing corners of Hell imaginable.

Crossed: Psychopath is a horror story that truly horrifies.  Needless as it is to say, but I loved it.

Crossed 3D Volume 1

"And sick kids was not something Mac was going to ignore."

An improvised group of warriors calling themselves the Handymen undertake a suicide mission to rescue a pediatrician trapped inside a hospital on Manhattan island...

Before picking up and reading Crossed 3D Volume 1, I was thinking about the controversial and (justifiably) infamous A Serbian Film, and how there was next to no chance whatsoever that I would ever even consider watching it.  I have heard and read enough about the film to know that it crosses the thin line between exploring a monstrous evil and just flat out exploiting it.

Then I started reading Crossed 3D Volume 1 and had to remind myself that I was nothing more than a hypocrite.  While I refuse to watch a motion picture enacting horrible and brutal atrocities because I claim to find said horrible and brutal atrocities nauseating and offensive, I happily purchase and read a comic book series that is filled with many of A Serbian Film's very same horrible and brutal atrocities.  Horrible and brutal atrocities that are now being presented in 3D, no less.

About that 3D.  Yes, while it is a neat gimmick that makes a certain number of images "pop", it also makes an equally number of images murky and difficult to figure out.  I am hesitant to blame the 3D conversion, though.  I think a great many of my problems with the 3D effects are rooted in the fact that 1) I had to take off my real glasses in order to wear the comic's itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie 3D glasses, something that played havoc with my ability to focus on the images and text, AND 2) I suffer from a slight case of color blindness, so my eyes had a fair amount of difficulty translating the color coded 3D conversion.  I just couldn't tell body parts from rubble and the splashing blood was just another brownish smudge among many brownish smudges.

The story itself is, for most of it pages, short, brutal and ruthless.  As was the case with writer David Lapham's premiere Crossed story (Crossed: Family Values, where I first compared the series content to the content of A Serbian Film) this tale fearlessly dives into some dark and twisted territory.  Very few of the story's characters manage to escape that territory.

I feel compelled to note that the first version of the previous paragraph's last sentence had ended with the word "unscathed", but, after giving it some serious thought, I knew that was untrue.  No one is capable of surviving in the insane world of Crossed "unscathed".  The world of Crossed is, quite literally, that of Hell on Earth.  No atrocity or abuse is shirked away from.  The darkest, dirtiest and most damning of desires are acted out with an insane joy that is utterly chilling.

Which is something that brings me back around to the beginning of this review and the point that I was, once again, trying to figure out.  Like many people, I have fallen into the "this" is like "that" meets "that" descriptive trap.  The way I would best describe Crossed to a someone that has not read it would be, "It's like 28 Days Later meets A Serbian Film."  The Crossed are the kinky cousins of the rage virus victims, but they are not mindless killing machines.  They retain their core aspects and, even worse, their memories, so they are capable of more than just physical brutality.  They can also engage in psychological abuse, by taunting their uninfected loved ones with the most unspeakable behavior and inviting them to join in.  Lapham's stories are how the uninfected fight back against or fall victim to that taunting.

I think it is that psychological battle, more than anything, that makes Crossed such compelling reading for me.  It gives the over-the-top sex and violence something akin to a deeper meaning and it also makes the faint glimmer of hope glimpsed during each bittersweet ending shine all the more brightly.

Crossed: Family Values #5, 6, & 7 (of 7)

Well, I am at a loss for words as to how best summarize the events of the last three issues of Crossed: Family Values.  How about:  Birth.  Suffering.  Torture.  Infection.  Incest.  Sex.  Murder.  Birth.  Murder.  Infection.  Suicide.  Murder.  Escape?   

After the stomach churning horrors witnessed and/or endured by the narrator in the first four issues, I had thought that there was no way for writer David Lapham and artist Javier Barreno to equal, much less surpass, those terrible events.  I was wrong.  The opening page of issue five showed me that the dark heart of horror was still beating loud and strong and that the suffering and death were far from over and, perhaps,  would never end.  Not until the last living person, Crossed or not, was dead, that is.  One thing that the Crossed series has gotten across with brutal clarity is that the Crossed are only uninhibited versions of "normal" people.  They are us and we are them.  There is nothing that either are incapable of doing, which only adds an extra philosophical bite to the comic.

I was also wrong when I complained in my previous review about the lack of quiet moments to develop the surviving characters.  There were plenty of those in the final three issues of the story arc.  Even better, though, the quiet moments made the bursts of graphic sex and violence that erupt with an emotionally exhausting frequency all the more potent.  It makes the quick as a blink or slow as a tear fates that many of the characters meet all the more powerful.  When characters die in a Crossed story, they die hard, and Lapham and Barreno let the reader feel every one of them.

Crossed: Family Values, like Crossed, is not for everyone.  Believe me when I tell (or warn) you that this comic series is filled with the roughest of rough sex and violence, there are no taboos left unexplored.  It could best be described as the comic book equivalent of A Serbian Film.  Why I can happily read Crossed: Family Values, but would not watch A Serbian Film (even if I were paid to do so) is less a matter of taste than of my ability to distance myself from the grotesque and sickening images on the page far easier than I could the live action images of a motion picture.  The characters in Crossed: Family Values are not people, not men, women, or children, they are just drawings on a piece of paper.  It is less "real" to me than any movie could ever be.

I do not know if that is a good defense or if it is just a weak excuse, but it is the best that I have, at the moment.

Crossed: Family Values #2 - 4

Crossed: Family Values launched its story arc with an impressive amount of destruction and depravity that promised it would be venturing into sick and twisted territory that the comic's debut story dared not go.

Now, if you have read the first Crossed story, then you know that Family Values writer David Lapham and penciler Javier Barreno have set themselves a mighty high bar to try and jump over.  Do they succeed?

Well... almost (that bar is pretty damn high) but there looks to be a little more story left to be told in this sequel's arc.  Although what unexplored depths of depravity can lurk beneath the ghastly horror that the story's narrator witnesses in issue three (a gross out that pays homage to Joe D'Amato's Anthropophagus*) is beyond my quiet horror focused imagination's capability. 

[*Whether or not this comparison could be construed as a spoiler depends on whether or not you have actually seen, or know about, the notorious and over-the-top gross outs in the uncut Anthropophagus.]

But that only addresses the visceral aspects of the story.  What about the characters and their stories?  Here Lapham and Barreno (well, Lapham more than Barreno) fall a tad short of that bar.  Crossed: Family Values is a series big bangs with little to no build-up between them.  While the gruesome violence and the "who is acting worse, the crossed or the survivors" question that it asks certainly delivers the wince inducing goods, Lapham doesn't take any time to layer in some quiet character building moments.  This weakens what should be key moments of catharsis in the story.  The weakest of them all is the entirely of out of left field actions taken by the narrator's mother in issue 3.   With a little tweaking the sequence could have been more than just a set-up for another over-the-top gore panel.

Despite its weaknesses, though. Crossed: Family Values has enough strength and juice in it to deliver the gruesome and devilishly mean-spirited thrills that Crossed fans no doubt crave.

Crossed #9 & Crossed: Family Values #1

The Garth Ennis scripted and Jacen Burrows drawn "limited run" comic Crossed definitely makes the short list for the saddest, sickest, dirtiest, meanest, nastiest, bleakest and yet most heartwarming horror story that I have read in quite a long time. It had me so scared that I actually put off reading the final issue because I was so deathly afraid of finding out what sad fate awaited the few remaining survivors (if you could call what they go through "surviving’) in the nightmarish and brutally over-the-top apocalypse that Ennis had envisioned and that Burrows had so eloquently drawn to life.

I hesitate to call the ending "perfect," because I do not want to oversell its emotional power and, truth be told, it isn’t perfect. But there is genuine true to life emotion in the book and, despite all of the notorious over-the-top sex and violence and callous brutality by the Crossed and the un-crossed alike, there is an exceptionally high degree of quiet emotional subtlety. The four silent panels on the last page concludes the emotional arc begun by the characters in Crossed #0 and left this reader with a wan yet happy smile. It was an ending that just felt right, emotionally and intellectually and I am glad that Ennis has stated that his particular story is finished. It does not need to be ruined with an unnecessary "And on the next day..." sequel that either cancels out the closure offered by the current ending, or simply heaps more horrific unpleasantness upon the characters, just so they can do the dance macabre one more time. Although I do find it very difficult to think of any horrific unpleasantness that could surpass what has already happened to the characters in Crossed issues 0 through 8.

But, as Ennis himself has pointed out, the Crossed are great villains and the world (if it is a world wide phenomenon) is a very large place. There have to be others with stories to tell, right?

Which brings me to Crossed: Family Values #1, which is set during the same apocalypse, but features an entirely different cast of would be survivors, and is written by David Lapham and drawn by Javier Barreno. As its title suggests Family Values concerns how one particular family (with an incestuous "secret") attempts to survive the Crossed. Like many a well intentioned sequel, the first issue promises more of the same...but only "different," and it certainly does deliver. Crossed: Family Values begins with a visceral punch that feels oh so right to the sick and twisted universe that Ennis and Burrows created in the first Crossed story and Lapham and Barreno clearly look forward to putting their flawed and deeply troubled characters through the sex and violence wringer.

I was dreading Crossed: Family Values when I picked it up. But when I set it down I was eager to find out what happened next. At the moment it seems that the potential Crossed franchise is in very good hands.

Crossed #0 & #1

"What you have to understand is that no one ever found out how it started."

But everyone sure as shit knew how it ended, with a loud and clear atomic bang that was far from the worst of it.  Because shortly before that first bomb went off, a random assortment of people across the globe suddenly turned gleefully, sadistically and murderously insane.  It's easy to tell who all the crazy people are, because they all bear a distinctive mark...

If complete and utter blood spattered carnage is your kind of thing, then Crossed should be your kind of horror comic.  This book has slopped the red stuff around from panel one and has only taken a handful of panels for a breath since the world went splat in the prologue vignette that was issue zero.  But this time around there is a very good reason for the madcap race to survive the Apocalypse of the Crossed.

You see, the Crossed are every bit as intelligent and communicative as they are sadistic and insane.  Imagine the terrors that could have been unleashed in 28 Days Later if the Infected of that film retained their intelligence and worked together to achieve their murderous ends.  That should give you some idea of the kind of threat that the ragtag group of survivors in Crossed have to face.  There are no safe havens in which to hide and try to "wait things out" while trying not to go stir crazy.  At this moment in time, it's a breathless race to stay at least one step ahead of the Crossed.  When the survivors do have a moment to rest, they dare not approach a populated area or even start a campfire to warm themselves, cook whatever food they have managed to grab and carry with them, or to purify the local ground water for drinking.  The outlook is certainly bleak.

While the current emphasis is clearly on graphic violence and twisted sexuality, writer Garth Ennis does not neglect his, at the moment, largish cast of characters too much.  While some, if not most, of them are obviously meant to be fodder for the Crossed, there a few that stand out from the pack and are clearly going to be the focus of the developing story.  At the moment the leader of the group is Cindy, a single mom that is fiercely protective of her son, Patrick.  Narrating these End Times style events is Stan, a young drifter that loves to tell the reader just how ill prepared everyone is/was for what one ill-fated survivor termed "a global clusterfuck."  Thomas, don't call him Tom, and Kelly, a young woman blinded by the atomic blast, appear to have been friends of Stan's from Before; for all three are rescued by Cindy during the chaotic beginnings of whatever it is that is happening.  (And I seriously doubt that the trees have anything to do with it.  Well, at least I hope they don't.)  What is in store for them doesn't look to be pleasant, but it sure as hell isn't going to be boring.