Monsters and robots falling from the sky! Mysterious (and familiar?) superheroes joining our intrepid gang on their journey to event ground zero! Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe and John J. Hill’s Crossover continues, whether Zack Jenkins and Dan McMahon want it to or not.
Zachary Jenkins: The most hyped book in comics keeps on creating content. Dan, I am absolutely fascinated by this title. I can’t say I am traditionally enjoying it, but every damn issue leaves me perplexed. I want to solve this puzzle.
Dan McMahon: So between issue #2 and #3, I read God Country, which blew my mind. A touching story of loss and acceptance of a parental figure and so much more thematically. It was honestly a comic that blew me away, and I want to read it again because it slaps. Now onto this. … I honestly have been excited for this issue, and I am excited for the next one. I can’t tell if I love it for what it is or just can’t look away.
Donny Watches the Watchmen
ZJ: This issue opens with the most faux-highbrow comics bro topic ever — that’s right, we’re talking about Watchmen.
Watchmen is an incredible, if flawed, piece of comics. It’s a deconstruction of superheroes as a trope and has been heavily influential on the last 35 years of comics. You can see it heavily in the works of popular writers like Tom King and his near worshipful devotion to the nine-panel grid. You can see it in how DC Comics has been milking the IP over the last few years. You can see how HBO used the IP to springboard into criticism of the glut of cape content in major media. You can see how the film adaptation helped build the #SnyderCut culture we are overwhelmed by. The first page of this comic acknowledges that Watchmen is everywhere.
DM: Watchmen and I have a complicated relationship. It’s not a secret I love darker and edgier comics. I was raised on Garth Ennis, so it’s sort of hard-coded into me at this point. I reread Watchmen last year to dissect it for my show, and I walked away more confused than ever. I see how it has influenced so much in comics and comic-adjacent media. I felt gross when I closed it, though. It was meant to be a sort of red flag for others, but DC milked it without keeping any of the nutritional value until the HBO show.
ZJ: How Cates and Shaw present Watchmen here is a bit confusing. It’s centered on the Squid and how Adrian Veidt’s evil, monstrous plan led to lasting peace and saved the world. Cates calls that “comic book […] bullshit” and says if superheroes were real, that would never actually work. It’s been a point of discussion on slow days at the comic shop for generations between nerds who want to prove they truly understand the work.
DM: Even the book itself essentially says that this grand-scheme, big-brother type stuff fixes nothing. Rorshach’s journal still makes its way into the hands of someone who we suspect will publish it. The show is a continuation of that in the theme that no matter what, evil is still present. Its narrative use in Crossover is less of a metaphorical stroke of genius but rather just another empty stroke. Take it or leave it, but Watchmen changed things and told an extremely powerful story. Crossover wants to be that, but the way it undercuts its own messaging with things like that just confuses me as to what it’s trying to do.
ZJ: That things don’t work is all but the textual conclusion Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons want you to come to. The last page of the comic shows the truth being spread. The (and this next part hurts me to type) 2017 Geoff Johns and Gary Frank sequel Doomsday Clock hinges on this happening. The 2019 HBO series makes it the textual next step. It’s laughable to me that we’re pretending like this is a galaxy-brain take.
DM: Doomsday Clock was sort of DC’s own Crossover, with so many random characters being shoved in just to be like “Remember Batcow? Geoff Johns does.” But it still carries the themes instead of the pointing and laughing that this does saying that things don’t work like that. That’s right, Moore and Gibbons slaps that message right on the page!
ZJ: In 2018, Cates collaborator Ryan Stegman tweeted “I don’t want to sound too cocky but this venom comic we are making is way better than Watchmen”[sic]. Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. After reading this comic, I’m deeply concerned that too many people took it seriously.
DM: I don’t even know if Watchmen is good; it’s so hard for me to say yes or no because it’s so important to everything now. Those influences are everywhere, for better or for worse. It just feels like another cheap look at how deep I can be but in a series full of them.
ZJ: Anyway, this is a comic where the RX-78-2 Gundam punches the Squid from Watchmen, so I don’t even know what tone it is supposed to strike.
DM: OK, but how cool was that to see? It’s like when the Gundam fights Mecha Godzilla in Ready Player One … oh, wait …
Nick vs. Ellipse
ZJ: This issue does shine an interesting light on our two protagonists, giving up a piece of their history while grounding us on where they are today. I think Cates and Shaw do an admirable job drawing subtle parallels between these two, sowing the seeds for what will come next. While bloviating about Watchmen, we get to see Ellipse escape from Denver and the dome. If we are meeting the story where it’s at, she should hate comics more than anyone else; they came true and destroyed her life. Instead, she lives in a comic shop and literally wears a domino mask at all times. On the other hand, we have Nick, an anti-comics religious extremist, who used to be a big enough fan to recognize characters from a series whose first issue only moved 8,000 copies. He’s obviously conflicted and on his way toward a face turn. How well this plays out is to be seen.
Honestly, I still feel like Nick, Elle, Ava and Otto are pretty paper-thin characters at this point. Ava is a kid. Otto is a comic shop guy. Elle is the girl you wish you could date. Nick is the sympathetic guy who has made bad choices. We’re slowly getting there, but I worry that some of the new developments will pump the breaks even more.
DM: It was nice to see a bit more development for the characters in this one, but it didn’t feel like enough. It was more of the dome stuff for Elle and more about Nick’s father. It didn’t feel like there was much added to the character of Nick that I didn’t already sort of assume. I did like his sort of gatekeepy, “Oh, you wouldn’t know them” kind of comment about the Paybacks. Seems like he was a comics fan until the accident. I hope we get more development from him that doesn’t abandon the fact that he blew up a comic store and almost killed Elle.
ZJ: Yeah, we gotta not forget the domestic terrorism.
The Ol’ Cates & Switch
ZJ: We finally get the first true, for real, crossover in this book called Crossover. First we meet Doctor Blaqk, a kooky parody of Doctor Strange who first appeared in the title Buzzkill by Cates, Shaw and Toadies drummer Mark Reznicek. He’s the Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor of the protagonist, a character who gets superpowers from consuming drugs and alcohol. It’s, ummm, not a subtle comic.
DM: So you told me that those were real characters and not just parodies of other characters. Well, they are parodies of other characters but parodies that they brought over from another book that didn’t find success.
ZJ: We also get reintroduced to The Paybacks! This team of parody superheroes comes from Cates, Shaw and Eliot Rahal’s comic that was canceled after four issues at Dark Horse before being canceled after another four at Heavy Metal. They are if the Suicide Squad were repo men. Doctor Blaqk is on the team for reasons that were never expanded on. The book wants you to know how awesome they are and how foolish everyone was for allowing that masterpiece to get canceled twice.
Also their driver is Miracleman.
DM: When I saw Blood Pouch, I thought of Shatterstar, but now I know the truth. It’s like the ads from the back of the comic are now just a part of the comic. Synergy, right? I cannot tell if that whole bit of look-at-these-awesome-characters-who-got-canceled was just a funny dunk on himself or more of a serious plea to go back and read these comics.
ZJ: Finally we get the ol’ Cates & Switch, as we learn Ava is just really bad at drawing. You see, it wasn’t Superman who saved her, as was implied in issue #1, instead we get Mike Allred’s Madman.
DM: I honestly was so let down by this. I am a DC fan through and through. I was honestly excited to see Cates’ voice for Superman, but alas I am yet again the fool. I don’t know too much about Madman, but I do know that Mike Allred’s comics always vibe with me. I just was really holding out hope that it would be the last son of Krypton.
ZJ: I love Allred’s art, but unfortunately, Madman has always been on my list of books that I really need to get around to. The titular Madman is Frank Einstein, an amnesiac former agent of the Tri-Eye Agency who was stitched back together after his death and now does wacky pop art adventures. Our fellow contributor Justin Partridge said of the title “that book is a lot sadder and melancholic than people realize. People always remember the ‘Ginchy!’ and random monster designs, but that whole book is about a guy working through extreme depression and mental illness and catastrophic memory loss.”
This whole concept is wild to me. I may not be enjoying the book, but damn if I am not hooked. It reminds me a lot of my experience with The Walking Dead. I didn’t like reading that comic, but I was compelled to keep reading and see where Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard went with it. Any closing thoughts, Dan?
DM: I’m the kind of person who sticks it out till the end. Like I watched True Blood start to finish as it aired on TV even at its worst. This feels like that. I love some of the ideas, but it’s just not where I think it could be. I know Donny Cates writes some incredible comics, like God Country. I just hope this series finds its edge.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
