| Title: | Crossed: Family Values |
| Contributors: | David Lapham Javier Barreno |
| Publisher: | Avatar Press |
| Issue #: | Series |
| Year: | 2011 |
| Pages: | 179 Pages |
| Age Rating: | 21+ (Language, Violence, Gore, Rape, Sex, Nudity, Violence Against Women, Incest, Violence Against Children) |
| Story Grade: | B |
| Art Grade: | B |
This story follows a normal looking family. And while they appear to be a standard, vanilla, upstanding family in their community, there are secrets, many deep-dark-secrets this family hides. While the story is good as a stand alone, it is not great, but good, as a follow up to the shockingly honest Crossed, it feels like a standard horror sequel where more blood, more bodies more shocking is the main goal. That is how I would wrap this book up in nutshell.
David Lapham definitely took the themes Ennis had in the original story and exaggerated them to the extreme. And, like the original Crossed story, Lapham didn't pull any punches, but it felt forced, like Lapham was trying one up Ennis and how far he would go. For example, the father in the story is a child molester but he will only sexually abuse his own biological children, hence the book's subtitle, Family Values. It is never really explained why, but in following the theme of the original Crossed series, it doesn't need to be either. The point is, taking the story to this extreme in this case felt forced. And while the story wasn't bad, it was definitely cliché, stereotypical and again, felt forced.
I am not sure why Ennis did not hold the helm for this round, but I believe that it might because he said everything he needed to say the first time around. Trust me when I say, he said a lot.Taking over the art in this series, Javier Barreno did a great job retaining the artistic feel of the first book. He did this so well that I was shocked when I finally realized he wasn't Jacen Burrows. Barreno made it nice for transitioning from one series to the next, but I felt sort shorted that Barreno didn't at least try to make it his own.
All in all I grade this series a B. It's definitely not as good as the original series, but if you recall my review of the original series, at the bottom of the Super-Sized 100th Review, there isn't much that that can match it. You could skip this series if you wanted, I mean it does give you several pages worth of reasons to skip it, graphic incest-rape scenes are not many people's first point of entertainment, but it is worth reading if you can get past all that throwing up in your mouth.
Until next time... Remember that there are some things that shouldn't be kept in the family.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment