Crossed (comics)

Crossed is a horror comic book series written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Jacen Burrows and published by Avatar Press. The comic explores the aftermath of a global pandemic that turns people into homicidal maniacs who bear a distinctive cross-shaped facial rash. After the series concluded in 2010, the comic was followed with Crossed: Family Values published from 2010 to 2011, Crossed 3D written by David Lapham in 2011, and Crossed: Psychopath also written by Lapham was published from January to December 2011. An anthology series, Crossed: Badlands, was written and drawn by a rotating creative team and was published from February 2012 to July 2016. The franchise has also spawned two webcomics: Crossed: Wish You Were Here, which ran from 2012 to 2014, and Crossed: Dead or Alive, which began syndication in November 2014.

Crossed is a creator-owned series from writer Garth Ennis and artist Jacen Burrows. It began with Crossed #0 on August 27, 2008, and all 10 issues have been released.

The second series, Crossed: Family Values, is written by David Lapham and drawn by Javier Barreno. Ennis described how this unusual situation for a creator-owned property came about:

To be honest, there was never really going to be a volume two—William [Christensen, editor-in-chief/publisher of Avatar] would ask me regularly about the possibility, but apart from one or two vague scenes I pretty soon realised I had no more Crossed stories in me. I didn't want to force the issue, either, because I'm very pleased with Crossed and don't want to dilute it with a sequel that I hadn't the ideas to sustain.

That said, it's pretty obvious that what you have with Crossed is a ready-made fictional world with a good deal of potential for further development, and the Crossed themselves seem to be strong enough villains to maintain an audience. So when William suggested other people doing more I said I wasn't averse to it, so long as a) I thought the creative teams were up to scratch, and b) my own story and characters would be left alone. Which means no sequel, no more Stan, Cindy, Thomas or Kitrick (or Horsecock, Face or Stump, come to that)- just fresh stories set in the same world.

As for David, who better? I think you'll see right from his first episode that he knows exactly what he's doing with the Crossed.

The story follows survivors dealing with a pandemic that causes its victims to turn into bloodthirsty maniacs that carry out their most evil thoughts. Carriers of the virus are generally known as the "Crossed" due to a large, cross-like rash that appears on their faces – other names include "cross-faces" and "plus-faces". This contagion is primarily spread through bodily fluids, which the Crossed have used to great effect by treating their weapons with their fluids, as well as through other forms of direct fluidic contact such as rape and bites, assuming the victim lives long enough to turn. A major difference between the Crossed and other fictional zombie or insanity-virus epidemics is that while the Crossed are turned into homicidally violent psychopaths, they still retain a basic human-level of intelligence: thus, they are still capable of using tools and weapons, driving motor vehicles, setting complex traps, and other actions. It is occasionally noted in the series that a Crossed retains any skills they had prior to their infection; most simply lack the patience or sanity to do anything not immediately related to their vicious impulses.

The contagion spread across the entire world, with the Crossed killing, raping, engaging in cannibalism and maiming for fun, with governments and military overwhelmed; friends and family butchered each other with anything they laid their hands on, and cities were turned into vast charnel houses. Much of the Middle East was wiped out when Israel deployed nuclear weapons. The last organized act by the U.S. government was to shut down as many nuclear power plants as possible and then kill the nuclear scientists and technicians to prevent them from reactivating the plants. A few nuclear power plants were not reached in time, however, such as Wolf Creek in Kansas and Browns Ferry in Alabama, detonated by Crossed who removed the control rods. One by one, the remaining military bases are overrun. Soon human civilization is all but gone, and mankind is an increasingly endangered species.