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Rereading Crossed

Started by JayzusB.Christ, 02 March, 2019, 10:51:00 AM

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JayzusB.Christ

I've been looking mainly at the issues that Garth Ennis wrote.  It's amazing, but out of the schlockiest, nastiest torture-porn backdrop imaginable, he's managed to create something touching and beautiful.  Just finished the last episodes of the saga of Harry, Paddy, Jock and Taff, and even as the monsters wearing masks made of severed genitals closed in I found myself close to tears.

Other writers on the comic vary from those who think it's supposed to be a gory video-nasty knock-off to others who do a very fine job,  but Ennis outshines them all.  I never thought I'd say anything like this in the days of Judgement Day or even Preacher, but even Alan Moore's episodes of Crossed don't match the emotional depth of Garth's.

It's certainly not the best comic ever written, but for me it shows how incredibly far a writer can come since writing about mutant Cursed Earth teddy bears.

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Professor Bear

I never got into it, but I did appreciate that it raised the bar for comics in general by showing that you can do the nastiest shit imaginable in a comic and it won't automatically shift copies, which was a lesson that comics writers clearly needed teaching circa 2000-2014.