Crossed: Badlands Series Review

Title:	Crossed: Badlands
Contributors:	Garth Ennis Jacen Burrows Jamie Delano (W) David Lapham (W) David Hine (W) Simon Spurrier (W) Christos Gage (W) Daniel Way (W) Justin Jordan (W) Leandro Rizzo (P) Jacen Burrows (P) Georges Duarte (P) Raulo Caceres (P) Miguel Garrido (P) Christian Zanier (P) Miguel Ruiz (P) Rafael Ortiz (P) German Erramouspe (P) Emilliano Urdinola (P)
Publisher:	Avatar Press
Issue #:	1 - 64
Year:	2012 - 2014
Pages:	32 Pages
Age Rating:	18 (Language, Violence, Gore, Nudity, Sex, Bestiality, Rape, Necrophilia, Adult Themes)
Story Grade:	A
Art Grade:	A

Crossed: Badlands marks the return of Garth Ennis to the Crossed series and oh what a return it is. Badlands picks up telling the horrific stories of common, everyday, survivors in their quest to keep moving or die.

Sadly Ennis doesn't stick around after issue five and we get a slew of other writers, who are still quite good, but not Ennis. But Ennis does write again at Issue 25 (for five issues) and comes back again at Issue 50 (again for another short run). Notice the pattern?

This series is broken into five to six issue mini-stories. Each new mini-story tells the tale of a new group of survivors or a survivor and each story jumps around in the timeline of events. It can be a little confusing at first, but in the end, it reads in a kind of fun and fresh way. Several of the characters in the early stories make appearances in some of the other stories, so there are those Easter Eggs to tie everything together.

These stories are just as vile, just as disturbing and just as revealing of human nature as the original Crossed and yet it still doesn't feel old and tired. After pounding through 60 back issues, I ordered issues #61 - #64 from my LCS and read them in one sitting. Not every mini-arc is a gem, but there are quite a few gems throughout the series thus far.

One of the main attractions of  this series is the fact that the characters are all so flawed. It's not necessarily that the survivors are dark and broody, or even evil (although some are) but each survivor has a unique character flaw that is explored. The writers explore topics like: What would you do to survive? What does a person without hope do in a world of the Crossed? Is there truly any escape from the Crossed? What is the true nature of mankind; altruistic or hedonistic?

These themes are explored throughout the series and each character and their own, unique flaws are put to the test when place into these types of scenarios.

For the volume of artists that are working on this series, there is a fairly consistent feel to the art. I can't pinpoint of favorite artist in the series simply because they all do a great job in keeping the feel of the book consistent throughout.

As the image on the right can testify, this series is not for the faint of heart. Not only are there 'No-No Bits' throughout the series, there are acts of carnal, visceral and almost demonic rape, torture, murder and so much more. This is a family friendly blog, so the 'No-No Bits have been appropriately adorned, but rest assured that under those shocked smiley faces the scene is graphic and usually gross.

But this series is about a whole lot more than "No-No Bits' and the vile acts of humanity and the crossed. The series is really about the characters and what their limits are and how far those limits can be stretched in the name of survival.

This series is Grade A. I won't give it an A+, because some of the books in the series are not that great. As a matter of fact I was actually bored at times, rarely, but it happened more than once. But this series deserves the A I have given it. If you haven't read any of the Crossed series and you like the no-holds-barred type of storytelling and artwork, then it's not too late.

Until next time... Remember that there is no hope. There is no escape. There is only Crossed.