Crossed #2 – Review

By Garth Ennis (story), Jacen Burrows (art), Juanmar (colors)

The Story: The pack of survivors plan their next move. With most of the North American populace infected and migrating south for new victims the logical choice is to move northward, perhaps towards Alaska. But as the group prepares to make its move an enormous error is made and another member falls victim to the Crossed.

What’s Good? The survival instincts and rationale displayed by these survivors is very grounded in reality. Their plans are sound and the mistakes made (and the paid consequences) are unnerving, causing genuine frustration to the reader (in a good way).  The passage of time that’s been given (about a year on the run now), provides a more interesting picture of things as well.

The Bad? I still don’t care about any of these survivors. There’s just not enough pages or time devoted to them or their personalities. In my mind, they’re all fodder who may die at any moment. Too much time is spent discussing logistics and the nature of the Crossed, which I honestly don’t mind, but because of this we’re given no time to relate to the characters.

The biggest problem I have with this issue, however, is the insane amount of disgusting masturbatory references on display. I can see this happening on occasion, but it’s so over-the-top and so frequent that it comes off as being gratuitous just for gratuitous’ sake. It’s not shocking, just stupid.

Conclusion: The story progression is overpowered by a lot of unneeded sexual and masturbatory scenes. Skip this one.