Linking To: CrossGen Redux (& New Genesis?)
Kirk Warren @ The Weekly Crisis has a write up I think all of you should read — especially any Disney executives who happen to be in the audience.
Confession time:
before manga, before buying trade collections and reprints and Essential, Ultimate, Showcase, Absolute, and Definitive editions of anything, before all three blogs or even my current job as a bookseller, I found the very first Forge and Edge anthologies at a local bookstore.
I picked them up. I flipped the pages. Five minutes later, I bought both.
I loved the stories. I loved the format — getting multiple comics in an anthology edition, “Gee, this is such a great thing, why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?” — I even started to get into the nascent multiverse they were building, this thing with the Sigils and how it played out; it was a great concept (anyone know who deserves the credit?) in that it introduced Powers (superpowers in the 4-color sense in many cases) to otherwise unrelated genres (sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, horror — anyone else remember Route 666? — wait, was there a sigil in that one?) and while I now know that attempting to bootstrap a multiverse with nothing but talent and balls and not nearly enough money is a fool’s errand, doomed to fail…
back then? Damn, I loved those comics.
This was 2000: the year before I changed careers, 3 years before I discovered manga (and realized that anthologies like Forge and Edge were a decades old vehicle for comics — in Japan), 4 years before my first blog and a full eight years before I launched the site you’re currently reading.
I didn’t start out as a Japanophile and Manga Snob. 2000 is also the year prior to my reintroduction to anime (Cowboy Beebop in aught-one on Cartoon Network) and I know for a fact I didn’t start to read manga obsessively until I came across Planetes in 2003 — yes, Planetes was my first manga.
It sold me on Japanese Comics as an industry. It still holds a special place in my heart. Without Planetes this blog wouldn’t exist.
…
Without CrossGen, I wouldn’t have given Planetes a second glance.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
My subscription to Comics on the Web was paid in advance through this month next year. If Disney does use Marvel to relaunch the CrossGen imprint before my subscription would have expired, I wonder if I get any consideration? ;) Hm? Maybe an advance readers copy of Forge+? (or Vector, or Caravan?)
Dudes, honestly: for the amount of money you wasted on Gerbil Action Flicks this year, I could relaunch the whole imprint, spend a couple million on TV ads, pay myself a million or five — and after all that I’d bet the comics would make, rather than lose money — and hell, the first three years or so would be nothing but reprints (~0 cost) anyway. (The old fans will buy them again — at least, I will — and the new fans would be amazed at how good these ‘new, edgy’ comics are)
And Diz? You already own CrossGen. You didn’t have to buy another comic book company to make this happen.
—
My origin as a comics fan starts with CrossGen; I switched to manga later, largely by accident, and also because I could no longer read the CrossGen stories I had followed for 4 years up to that point. (that, and manga Rocks — I am so very glad I picked up Planetes and not, say, Love Hina — though I appreciate Akamatsu as well, his work would not have been the best introduction)
Before CrossGen, I was just a generic, general issue, plain-vanilla sci-fi fan. I wonder how many others are now comic book fans because of the Florida Imprint That Tried — the Comic Books that Weren’t About Superheroes. (Or Insert Your Own Capitalized Summation And Eulogy Here).
Anyway, go read Kirk’s very fine article (and maybe dip into wikipedia to refresh/introduce yourself) and let’s all shed a tear and raise a glass: CrossGen is Dead. Really Dead.
(or at least mostly dead; anyone have the number for Miracle Max?)
