Crossed + 100 #1 Review

Title:	Crossed +100
Contributors:	Alan Moore Gabriel Andrade
Publisher:	Avatar Press
Issue #:	1
Year:	2014
Pages:	32 Pages
Age Rating:	18 (Language, Violence, Gore, Nudity, Sex, Adult Themes)
Story Grade:	D
Art Grade:	A

Crossed 100+ is the story of humanity's attempt to rebuild at the tail-end of the Crossed plague. While this series brings Alan Moore back to ongoing comic book series, something that hasn't happened in a while, it wasn't a stellar return for me. Looking at the book from strictly by the script, the book suffers horribly, while the story is intriguing and art is a stunning new look at the world of the Crossed.

This book is the story of a small band of people looking to rebuild the historical records of the world, including the plague of the Crossed as well as before the Crossed. While it's an interesting concept, the writing style of Alan Moore and his heavy use of futuristic slang, English (U.K.) specific slang and a few other language nuances like Moore's writing style, particularly dialog between characters, makes this book not only difficult to read, is can be painful and comprehensible for this admittedly American reader.

The above issues are compounded by the fact that this is issue one, which follows a typical dry and at times unexciting road map for introducing the reader to new characters, plots and conflicts.

As a result of the above, I found myself having to force myself into reading the next panel, and flog myself senseless to turn the next page. This doesn't make for a good reading experience. I am hopeful that with this issue under my belt that the next issue will be better. I will have a foundation of knowledge in the slang, dialects and other Moore writing traits. To be honest, it feels like I am reading a book written by a pretentious Sci-Fi author that has been challenged to make up enough non-sense-words and phrases to physically hurt the reader's brain. Maybe that is Moore's goal... to create the Crossed plague with this writing.

Now if you think I might be overly harsh on Moore, or that IU am not familiar with his work or his quirky nature, let me quantify this a review a bit for you. While I have not read everything by Moore, I have read Swamp Thing, From Hell and The Watchmen. I have even watched the documentary film on Moore (which was an odd Journey). So I am not new to Moore's writing, or they way he thinks. I was actually excited about it him coming to the Crossed books. I was simply disappointed by this outing.

What did make this book worth looking at the next panel was the lush, detailed artwork of Gabriel Andrade. The hell-worthy landscapes drawn by Andrade paint a detailed visual of a bleak world we are being introduced to.

But the artwork is not enough to overcome the issues with Moore's script. Storytelling is a form of communication. Making communication painfully difficult to understand or interpret, does not enhance the storyteller's ability to communicate the readers. And this book suffers heavily as a result.

All in all I grade this book a  C+ overall. Moore's script gets a D, while Andrade's artwork gets a solid A. I will know more about whether I will continue in this series after the next issue.

Until next time... Remember, just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there... in the shadows.