First, an update to the Wolfman Jack comic I discussed last time…reader Matthew found that one of the creators of the comic has a website and is selling copies! I’ve updated Friday’s post, but you can go straight to that website right from this little ol’ link here.
And now, there are only two questions left in the Question Time pile from way back when, so let’s see if we can wrap them both up.
Tim sez
“Out of the titles published by the late, (maybe) lamented CrossGen, are there any that you think with the right push might have been a success for Marvel?
“I say Ruse, and I know that it had a failed 4-issue Marvel mini, but it was basically shoved out there to die.”
Boy oh boy, CrossGen, that sure was a thing. Definitely a lot of money spent there to make it a thing, and those were certainly a whole lot of good-looking comics. However, the company went bankrupt in 2004, with its various assets eventually purchased by Disney.
I was not a big CrossGen guy…I mean, I didn’t have anything against it, and happily sold it when it was still an active thing. I just didn’t follow the comics, either for financial or time reasons, though in retrospect I wish I had at least bought the Sherlock Holmes-inspired Ruse. Part of what may have kept me away was the “shared universe” business, where there was some kind of connection or ‘nother amongst all the Crossgen titles, and man, I just didn’t have room in my heart then to allow that in.
That said, I did read a couple of CrossGen books. I enjoyed El Cazador, the pirate comic, unusual in the CrossGen-iverse in that it was set on Earth, and it’s been a while so I can’t recall if it had any overt connections to said universe. I also liked the fantasy title Abadazad, by J. M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog, which was not part of the overall CrossGenening, This was one of the few CrossGen properties continued by Disney after they acquired everything.
Ruse also continued post-Disney acquisition, as did a couple of other titles, published as mini-series during a brief, unsuccessful attempt at a revival.
Now, if I were to pick any titles to have been continued by Marvel and possibly been a success…well, I’d probably lean more towards their initial offerings, like Sigil and Sojourn, or whatever else that may have been sufficiently rejiggered to be part of the actual Marvel Universe and thus of increased interest to today’s Marvel fans. Route 666, CrossGen’s horror title, might have made for a good catch-all for Marvel’s monster characters.
And personally, El Cazador would have been nice to see again, though pinning it more closely to the Marvel Universe might have altered it a little too much.
In essence, the success of these comics under a Marvel imprint would have been tied to integration into the Marvel Universe at large, as asking fans to buy into a whole new Marvel-published imprint of a standalone setting probably wouldn’t have worked. Probably, like my El Cazador example above, would have altered the nature of all these books to the point where most of them became unrecognizable.
And at long last, our final question from ScienceGiant
“Hey, did we ever come to a consensus on Ben Grimm’s eyebrows? If The Thing should be drawn with no brow, or a unibrow ridge, or something else. Mike started the debate by n 2023.”
I did indeed start it, right here in this post.
I think I more or less wrap it all up a few days later, saying “every Thing is beautiful in its own way,” even as I look at a couple of other brow options for Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew. Anyway, the ultimate answer is “whatever you prefer is perfectly fine,” but the correct answer is still “no brow.” Glad that’s settled at last.
Thanks for all the questions, pals, and I’m glad I finally got around to answering them all. Hopefully those of you owed answers were still around to see them. Um, “still around” as in continuing to read the site, not as in “not dead yet.”
I didn’t read a lot of Crossgen at the time, beautiful artwork but I found the stories a bit hard to get into. Ruse was great but felt hampered by the need to align with the full on fantasy elements of hose original titles. Two later titles I really liked were Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the Crossovers which I believe were pretty much earth based so could probably slip quite comfortably into the Marvel universe, though I’m not sure they would have the rights to The Crossovers as I believe his might be creator owned. At the end of the day, if Marvel were looking to incorporate one of their purchased publishers material, The Ultraverse characters would be an easier and better fit. I don’t know how the legal issues stand, but it seems they made a lot of effort to buy something they they haven’t got any use out of. It’s a pity because some of those characters were pretty interesting, I loved that Marvel/Ultraverse mash up Warren Ellis did and that rather interesting combined Avengers team of The Wasp, Thor, Quicksilver, Topaz, Prototype and a very different Black Knight who I assume was based on an Ultraverse character.
Regarding The Thing, has Aunt Petunia ever made an appearance in a published Marvel Comic, or is she just name-dropped by her nephew?
How about a Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One two part story where Aunt May and Aunt Petunia team up–abd maybe Willie Lumpkin and Agatha Harkness can have a cameo appearance?
Marvel doing anything with the Ultraverse seems unlikely for the foreseeable future. Marvel have never said anything publicly (apparently due to NDAs), but I think the rumour-mill eventually settled on Scott Mitchell Rosenberg having some sort of contractual position related to an “ongoing producer deal for all Malibu Comics properties”. So until he’s out of the picture, probably nothing.
The Crossovers was published by the Code6 imprint and titles were co-owned by CrossGen and the creators, so probably a mess Marvel doesn’t want to deal with.
Marvel have done a little with some of the CrossGen titles. CrossGen Tales came out in 2022, collecting the first issues of Ruse, Mystic, Sigil, and Sojourn. There was a Sigil omnibus in 2023 and a Mystic omnibus in 2024. (And some of those are available in the Marvel Unlimited app?) Ruse seems like the obvious one to do as an omnibus, but I guess not.
Does anyone remember the weird anthologies collecting their series that CG put out? There was…Forge and Edge/Vector (I just had to look those up). I recently was in another town and went to a comic shop that still had those on the shelf for sale for cover price and all I could think of is that nobody is every going to buy them.
For CrossGen, the only title I read much of was Way of the Rat, which I enjoyed. The titles of the others were too similar/generic for me to remember which was which. Like, Sigil? Scion? Solus? Sojourn? Meridian? Mystic? I wonder if they’d have done better if they had more memorable names.
Chris B-As I understand it, Marvel only purchased Malibu Comics due to DC showing interest in buying out Malibu, which would have given DC more market-share than Marvel. Marvel bought Malibu to stop DC from acquiring them, not with any actual plans for the Ultraverse.
Sean Mageen-Oh boy, did you miss out on a story. John Byrne introduced Aunt Petunia on page during his run on FF, and she was a young, attractive woman.
Chris V – …and then aged up in more recent appearances. Looks the same, but with grey hair.
@Sean
FF #239 – as Chris V said, she’s the exact opposite of what you’re (probably) assuming she’d be.
This is early in Byrne’s run, when he’s really trying to mess with the status quo. It’s right on the cusp of possibly my favorite run of any comic, the FF 240’s!
As someone who liked CrossGen, this is my assessment about each title, based on vague memories and probably containing inaccuracies:
Scion: pretty good! Ron Marz & Jim Cheung doing a story set on a fantasy world… you can see Cheung’s style evolve as the series went on, decent characters & stories.
Meridian: pretty good! Barbara Kesel wrote an engaging story about a princess on a world of floating islands gifted with power and her evil uncle similarly gifted… art by Josh Middleton and then Steve McNiven, another artist whose style evolves as the series goes on.
Sigil: meh, then Mark Waid & Scot Eaton make it better for a few issues; space opera, nothing special.
Mystic: not bad, Marz & Brandon Peterson… cheesecake & magic.
The First: nigh incomprehensible series about “gods.” Skip!
Way of the Rat: martial arts fun with nice art by Jeff Johnson.
The Path: samauri story, well-done, best Bart Sears art of the ‘00s
Crux: the Atlantis myth (or something similar) in the CrossGen universe; very good character writing by Waid, very good art by Steve Epting. Loses something when they leave, but the first 12 or so issues are worth reading.
Negation: a prison planet story by Tony Bedard & Paul Pelletier; very good! I looked forward to this book, Crux, and Ruse the most when they were coming out.
Ruse: Sherlock Holmes in the CrossGen universe; the Waid issues were very good (even though he disowned them)
Route 666: fun horror book, good art by Karl Moline.
El Cazador: fun pirate comic by Chuck Dixon & Epting.
Sojourn: uh… Greg Land becomes the Greg Land we know. For a cheesecake book, it was actually entertaining. I don’t know if it holds up, probably not.
Abadazad: if you like whimsical fantasy, recommended. Mike Ploog art!
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: I don’t remember this series at all, might not have read it.
Solus: unmemorable, but some of the early issues were drawn by George Perez. Looked nice, at least. Speaking of which…
CrossGen Chronicles: issue 1 introduces the universe and the first 4 titles. Rare Claudio Castellini interiors, otherwise skippable. Issues 2-5, however are worth buying because they contain some of the best art of George Perez’s career. They’re self-contained prequel stories for some of the CrossGen universe books, and they’re good in that respect. If you like Perez and haven’t seen these? Track them down immediately! Issue 2 is colored by Laura Martin (don’t remember if she colored the others, but all the colorists who worked at CrossGen were top notch), and is gorgeous.
@LouReedRichards
Thanks! I did buy and read the majority of John Byrne’s FF run back when they were published, but I guess I forgot about Aunt Petunia. Was it a situation where she was actually a young aunt?
@Mike Loughlin
Any idea why the company was called CrossGen? Was it a riff on Generation X or something? Did “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” inspire the movie of the same name?
When you mentioned George Perez drawing CrossGen Chronicles–and, full confession, I have never read a CrossGen comic–it reminded me of seeing dollar bin Ultraverse books with George Perez art on the Ultra Force (or something like that), which in turn makes me think of the ’80s George Perez covers for Dial “H” for Hero stories in Adventure Comics, which featured odd, off-model superhero characters which were often derivitive of pre-existing Big Two characters.
I think it would have been cooler if Malibu Comics had had George Perez drawing The Protectors comic run which featured a bunch of the old Centaur Comics characters which are in the public domain. At the very least, Perez could have created a better costume and look for The Ferret!
On a tangent, along with my Crisis on Earth-Mad superhero parody characters idea, it strikes me that DC should do a limited series featuring every super powered character who ever appeared in any iteration of Dial “H” for Hero. I would imagine there are close to 100 characters. Maybe call the story “Crisis in Dimension ‘H.’ ” Plastic Man goes missing, so his pal Woozy Winks gets Midnight to take the case. They consult with John Constantine or Zatanna, and end up in Dimension “H.” Maybe Bat-Mite can get in on the action as well?
“Marvel were looking to incorporate one of their purchased publishers material, The Ultraverse characters would be an easier and better fit.”
Yes, but they’d have essentialy been publishing their own competition, as the Ultraverse books were rather similar to what Marvel was already doing.
didn’t Marvel also want their printing press?
“the Waid issues were very good (even though he disowned them”
I wonder why!
“Was it a situation where she was actually a young aunt?”
Yes!
I got a BIG pile of crossgen books for free years ago, most of htem were pretty decent.
It might be a personal preference, but I think Ben’s eyebrows should not be attached to his brow at all, instead floating in space a small distance in front of his head. I swear I’ve seen this in several older Marvel comics and I thought it was a cool idea.
CrossGen later took over Lady Death, Snake Plissken and Dragons Lair. I’m trying to complete the original core CG run and like Route 666 best, followed by Ruse and way of the Rat.
“Marvel were looking to incorporate one of their purchased publishers material, The Ultraverse characters would be an easier and better fit.”
Yes, but they’d have essentialy been publishing their own competition, as the Ultraverse books were rather similar to what Marvel was already.
Eh, I was thinking more along the lines of some of the characters would be interesting additions rather than re-launching Malibu titles as such.
Characters like Rune, Ghoul and Firearm weren’t really like anything Marvel had back them – I think bringing in someone like Prototype as a foil for someone like Iron Man. I always thought Topaz was pretty cool, I remember when Kusiek and Perez were preparing their Avengers run, there was scuttlebutt that one of he members would be character that debuted outside of the Marvel Universe. That turned out to be Firestar of course – but there was a lot of talk that it might be Topaz from the Ultraforce. The interesting thing is that they eventually did introduce a very similar character with Silverclaw into the title (whatever happened to her.
The company was called CrossGen because it was set up to be a series of titles that Crossed Genres. As Mike Laughlin points out, the starting point behind the majority of their titles was, “OK, this series will take place in a fantasy setting. OK, this series will take place in a science fiction setting.”
The story going around for a long time was that Marvel purchased Malibu to acquire their computer coloring department. Personally, I wonder if Malibu’s license for Star Trek DS9 comics played any part.
@Chris V
Thanks for the explanation as to why the company was called CrossGen.
@Sean Mageean, @Chris V: the “cross genre” idea might be part of the reason for the naming. I remember it standing for “cross generation,” meaning the titles could appeal to both children and adults.