It’s fair to say that back in November 2020, I was harsh to Crossover #1. It was the day after the U.S. presidential election, and the last thing I needed was a book jerking off to the idea that superheroes would save us and that comics fans were the real oppressed people. I was bringing my own baggage to the book, but in a way, that’s the real crossover, the crossover of creator and consumer.
Crossover #1 was a bad comic. Heck, the entire first arc was dreadful. But something weird happened because I think Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw knew that and they pivoted into a much different book, one that has become one of my most anticipated reads.
You see, Crossover #13 is about Donny Cates realizing the world doesn’t revolve around him. This is not my projecting my inferences onto a writer who I have never spoken with, this is a summary of the plot. It is the culmination of an arc that turned from how dope fan culture is into a personal story about creating art.
Also Negan from The Walking Dead is there.
Crossover #13 posits that this series was a failure, not in terms of sales but in terms of story. Cates (ostensibly the fiction-suit version of the man, but hell, this reads like a Notes apology) wanted to write a love story but spent this entire run centered on big, crowd-pleasing cameos and stunts. He knows he whiffed it on the strong emotional core and gave readers empty calories. So he shares everything, his life story, love, abuse, drugs, pain, recovery. There’s sincerity, deep sincerity in these pages that is truly a thing to behold.
Then Negan, a Planeswalker from Magic: The Gathering, bashes his skull with a baseball bat.
From there, the book is a whirlwind. Every plot point from the first 12 issues gets neatly cleaned up. The title’s mea culpa for how it started. From the opening page, a cold open postulating on the literary analysis theory of “Death of the Author” and the literalized death of the author of the title, you are made to think this story is about Cates. It’s pretentious, yes, but pretentious in a Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman sorta way. We have come to expect stories about the power of the pen and the strength of words.
But this, my friends, is a comic book. And writers don’t make comics. Writers are leeches who rise to fame on the backs of their betters, sucking them dry and abandoning them when better opportunities come along. A comic book without a writer is still a comic book. A comic without an artist?
So Cates, in his dying breath, reminds us readers that artists are the true wizards of the comics world. Kids didn’t love Spawn because Todd McFarlane was a talented writer. Kids loved Spawn because he had chains, they love chains and no one draws better chains than The Todd. It’s Image Comics, not Word Comics. It’s such an audacious left turn from where this book was and such a massive promise of where the book is going that I can’t help but be impressed. In these reviews, we have constantly praised Geoff Shaw and Dee Cunniffe’s phenomenal art. Who knew we were actually pointing out the thesis of the book?
Crossover has won me over. It is a wild ride, and there’s nothing like it on the market. Maybe #14 sends things right back into the worst traits as they reenter the world of comics, but it’s gonna look good as hell and there’s no way it’s going to be boring.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
