CrossGen Comics



         


CrossGen (Cross Generation Entertainment) was an American comic books publisher. It was founded in 1998 by Mark Alessi. At the time, the comic book industry was at one of its lowest points. The more recent comic book publishers were going bankrupt. Sales figures were plummeting. The "generation gap", the trend where the age of existing fans increased while the number of new fans decreased, became painfully evident.

Mark Allessi and his complatriots felt that comic book industry had major problems that needed to be corrected. Most comic books were written by adult white males for adult white males. This resulted in comics that tended to reduce women to sex objects and minorities to cardboard stereotypes. Superhero comics dominated the shelves. Most comic books were set in tightly integrated shared realities with several decades worth of backstory. Oftentimes, a reader had to pick up several comic book series in order to understand the full story. In despirate efforts to attract attention, comic book publishers staged company-spanning annual crossover events (which, for the most part, amounted to little more then pointless slugfasts) and bizzare publicity stunts. According to Mark Allessi, all those things made it hard for a new reader to understand what was going on in the stories.

The masterminds behind CrossGen decided to avoid this. Their titles stayed away from superheroics, playing with the wide array of genres. There was a Space Opera (Sigil),a magical fantasy(Mystic), a folklore-esque fantasy (Meridian), a Homerian myth (First), a Tolkeinesque fantasy (Sojourn) a Samurai drama (The Path, a horror tale (Route 666), a Victorian detective series (Ruse), a Wuxia comedy (Way of the Rat) and Barbarian Epic (Brath). Comics like Scion, Negation and Crux mixed diffrent aspects of diffrent genres while producing something completely unique. All titles featured strong female characters (many of whom were main protagonists) and non-stereotypical minority characters. Although most CrossGen titles shared common elements, such as a sigil, a presence of a Mentor and a member of the god-like First, the titles rarely interacted with each other. And, aside from Negation War, there were no company crossover events.

In the matter of months, CrossGen became a major publisher in the league of Big 4 (DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Marvel Comics and Image Comics). The initial success invigorated the company. It began publishing more and more titles. It reached out to book stores, libraries and schools. CrossGen was the first company to publish it's products online. In 2002, Mark Allessi proudly proclaimed that soon, Crossgen will be number one comic book publisher.

In 2003, the company found itself amist a scandal over freelancer payments. In the process, many problems that were previously swept under the rug. Sales plummeted. As the company despirately tried to get it's affairs in order, the writers and the artists tried to remain on board. But as things went from bad to worse, they began abandoning the company one by one. In 2004, Crossogen was forced to file for bankrupcy. Currently it is facing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy trial and not publishing any books, with Sojourn, Negation War and a few other series cancelled in mid-story.

CrossGen became famous for its unusual working conditions. As opposed to the practise of hiring artists and writers on a freelance basis, CrossGen made their employees work in their headquarters in Tampa, Florida. This attracted a lot of famous artists in the beginning, but after the CrossGen's financial problems became obvious in 2003, most of them left the company.

Most of the titles in the CrossGen Universe involved characters who had mysteriously gained a sigil marking somewhere on their body, granting them unusual powers. This so called Sigilverse was linking all of the initial CrossGen books as well as some of the later ones, arguably making it harder for casual readers to sample series, because they felt they missed something if they didn't read the whole line of books. Later series from CrossGen downplayed the Sigil aspect or got rid of it altogether.

Titles put out by CrossGen included:





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