By Zack Quaintance — Crossover #1 is an ambitious comic. While reading this first issue, I got the impression that it wanted to be the start of a series that says something profound not just about comics, but about the lasting nature of fantasy stories in general. There are certainly shades of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s all-time great treatise on the subject, Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery, sprinkled throughout.

An added point of fascination is Crossover’s promise to do as the title implies and crossover, definitely with a host of Image Comics characters, but potentially also with Marvel and DC. The editor of this book is superhero comics veteran Mark Waid, perhaps the best-suited person in comics to oversee an industry-wide crossover. And I won’t spoil any reveals in this book, but I have for months been suggesting this is a Trojan Horse for a giant industry crossover, and the last page in this debut bolsters that thought.

That’s all well, and good, and I like all of that. I like the ambition, and I like the secret (or maybe not so secret) potential of the scope. I also really like the artwork in Crossover. The plot here is that a big superhero event story is intruding in our world, causing all sorts of damage. The team of artist Geoff Shaw, colorist Dee Cunniffee, and letterer John J. Hill depict this in a manner that is nothing short of remarkable, using a familiar four-color comic strip palette to differentiate the incursion from the more realistic world it’s destroying. And in this first issue, we only get a small taste of what these visuals may be capable of, leaving me to expect more. Much more.

That, however, is where my excitement for Crossover ends. Aside from the novelty potential and the artwork, the execution here is way off, feeling flawed, odd, and tone deaf to our ongoing tumultuous year. Broadly-speaking, this is a comic about comics fans being persecuted, that comes out the day after an election centered around actual real world persecution, and not that variety that comes with liking Aquaman. That’s the most distracting problem, but it’s not the only problem.

See, I wanted to like Crossover #1 so much more than I did. I loved the Donny Cates-Geoff Shaw book God Country, as well as their bombastic run on Thanos, but this first issue felt like it badly wanted to be something deeper than it was. There were a lot of metaphors in Crossover #1, but none particularly poignant nor smart. There’s stuff about zealotry, about fanatics rising against comic readers after comic book stories killed tons of people and destroyed Denver. But zealotry is bad isn’t an especially interesting or nuanced take, and here it felt like it was handled clumsily, positioned as it is against a hobby, even if it’s the hobby the target audience of the book loves.

A specific bit that really took me out of this story was a billboard reading, “God hates masks,” an attempt to be timely…placed above a URL that redirects to writer Donny Cates personal merchandise website vanity store. Respect the hustle, I guess, but maybe don’t position the hustle literally beneath something that evokes a global pandemic and one of the country’s longest-tenured hate movements. Yeesh.

And obviously I get that religious zealotry is dangerous. Perhaps there’s a point to be made later in the story about religious folks being similar to comics fans, with Jesus being their Superman, or something. But so far it’s all hollow.

Metaphors aside, the focus of the book felt too minimal. Our central characters are comics retailers, who are continuing to sell comics while a manifested comic story destroys the world (I think that’s the deal), and we’re asked to be incensed on their behalf. It’s a big ask, and the story rushes right into it, to the point that I — a person who loves comics to the point I run this site for free — did not feel sorry for the comics folks at all. I wanted to know how bad the world was damaged, what was going on with the threat from the opening pages, and about a dozen other things ahead of how this craziness was effecting one small business in Utah.

Ultimately, I found Crossover #1 to be like a meal made from complicated ingredients by a chef who didn’t really take time to think about how they might come together. It’s all steeped in top-tier artwork and swagger, but it just reads wonky. This book made me think about a line in another recent comic, Vault’s literary pretension sendup, A Dark Interlude #1. The narrator (deliberately awful, I should note), takes a shot at comics in general, saying people who read them don’t actually want stories that are smart. No, they want stories \that give an illusion of being smart. And boy, I sure couldn’t shake that thought while reading Crossover.

Overall: In spite of an ambitious and intriguing concept depicted through top-tier art, Crossover #1 is a bit awkward and disjointed, filled with ideas and metaphors that don’t hold up well when you stop to really think about them. That said, it still has quite a bit of potential. 7.0/10

REVIEW - Crossover #1

Crossover #1
Writer: Donny Cates
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Colorist: Dee Cunniffe
Letterer & Designer: John J. Hill
Story Edits: Mark Waid
Publisher: Image Comics
The creative powerhouses behind the bestselling, critically acclaimed GOD COUNTRY, Thanos Wins, and REDNECK returns for the biggest launch of the year. Imagine everything you thought was fantasy...was real. And now join us, in a world where reality is dead…and anything is possible...
Release Date: November 4, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Crossover #1

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.