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Underground > Comic Books >

The pending collapse of CrossGen

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:43 / 30.09.03

After reading all of the rumors and such about CrossGen's money trouble, it is starting to look like they may actually be shrinking a LOT, cutting output, laying off artists and retracting to being a minor indy company. When they started, it was pitched as "Bringing business models to comic publishing", giving artists saloaries, benefits, and office space. Since then, they have run through a LOT of money, build a inventory of comics aimed at gamers and fantasy fans and failed to crack sales of 25,000, even with a George Perez series.

My thought is that they made the same poor mistake that other "new companies" make when they get into publishing comics: Too many series, way too fast and not making it seem like the new books actually matter.

They started with 8 monthly series, all in place within their first 6 months, and while they had decent art, the writers they hired were mostly DC cast-off hacks like Ron Marz and Barbara Kessel, who had never had success on their own. The packaging was what I liked about them, tho. I LOVED their two "anthology" reprint books (Forge and Edge), not just for the price, but because it packaged the books in a format that was easiler to read. I can read a 140+ page book on a bus, on an exercise bike or at a coffee house easier than I can carry 6 issues of a flimsy comic book.

But their product was pretty bland. Standard fantasy novel stuff for the most part, and only RUSE struck me as innovative, and the only under Mark Waid.

Do you think any new company can make a dent in the direct market as it is structured today? Tokyopop is selling GREAT in bookstores, but their comic shop sales are still so low that if they didn't have bookstores, they would be losing money. Same for Viz.

And, as I finish rambling, how crappy of a company are you when you can't sell more than 25,000 of a George Perez #1 issue?

19:26 / 30.09.03

I honestly haven't picked up a single CrossGen title until El Cazador #1 this last month. It's good swashbuckley fun but other than that, I've had no idea of what to get from the CrossGen rack. It all looks like so much Imagey tripe when I'm cruising covers.

Do they even have a flagship title of any sort?

19:37 / 30.09.03

My impressions were similar - it felt to me as though they introduced far too many books at once without getting people really sold on the existing ones.

With respect to product, I really appreciate how they try to branch out into different genres - pirate stories, detective stories, magical fantasy, barbarian stories, etc. It's refreshing! So sick of fights-in-tights.

(here's where my opinion potentially becomes utterly useless)
At the same time, though, I never became an actual ongoing reader of any of the series because none of the stories struck me as innovative. Maybe it was the marketing, or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, but every time I read about a CrossGen title, it came off as a solid genre story but nothing groundbreaking, nothing new. I didn't have any interest in reading _standard_ detective stories; I can get those in Sherlock Holmes form in the library. I didn't want to read stories that were "typical but good $genre tales" - I wanted to read something _new_.

Was this possibly part of the problem? Most of their core books (to me) gave the impression of being solid and standard fare. Like oatmeal or toast - reliable and maybe quite good, but not attention-getting.

Also, at the beginning, the fact that all (or at least most) of the books were tied into the whole sigil-bearing mythos might have been a bit intimidating. The history of comics is littered with lots of really annoying and unnecessary massive crossovers - maybe readers thought that this might have been the case here.

21:02 / 30.09.03

I recently started reading Crossgen books when they began reissuing their TPs in the manga-sized Traveler format for $9.95 apiece. Surprisingly for an edgemeister like me, I've really enjoyed them. They're fluff, certainly, but for the most part high-quality and entertaining fluff, certainly well up to par for anyone forgiving enough to enjoy most of the genre fiction that's out there. The price was of course the intitial draw--I seriously doubt I would ever have impulse-bought any of these for the usual $15-20 TP price. But once I did, I enjoyed the first one (Scion) enough to pick up the second in that series, and then gradually accumulated all the other 7 or 8 books that have been released in the Traveler format so far. So far they've all been worth the $9.95 (although Mystic was borderline). Personally I hope the company makes it, as I'd be highly likely to keep picking these up as they come out. I actually hope this format ends up doing well enough that the other companies do something similiar. I can confidently say I'd buy a lot more comics--probably significantly exceeding the dollar amount I spend now--if collections were available in the $10-12 price range rather than the current $15-20.