Crossed is a horror comic book series written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Jacen Burrows and published by Avatar Press. The comic explores the aftermath of a global pandemic that turns people into homicidal maniacs who bear a distinctive cross-shaped facial rash. After the series concluded in 2010, the comic was followed by Crossed: Family Values in 2010 , Crossed 3D written by David Lapham in 2011, and Crossed: Psychopath also written by Lapham. An anthology series, Crossed: Badlands, was written and drawn by a rotating creative team. The franchise has also spawned two webcomics: Crossed: Wish You Were Here, which ran from 2012 to 2014, and Crossed: Dead or Alive, which began syndication in November 2014.
Contents
Publication history
Crossed is a creator-owned series from writer Garth Ennis and artist Jacen Burrows. It began with Crossed #0 on August 27, 2008, and all 10 issues have been released.
The second series, Crossed: Family Values, is written by David Lapham and drawn by Javier Barreno. Ennis described how this unusual situation for a creator-owned property came about:
To be honest, there was never really going to be a volume two – William [Christensen, editor-in-chief/publisher of Avatar] would ask me regularly about the possibility, but apart from one or two vague scenes I pretty soon realised I had no more Crossed stories in me. I didn't want to force the issue, either, because I'm very pleased with Crossed and don't want to dilute it with a sequel that I hadn't the ideas to sustain.
That said, it's pretty obvious that what you have with Crossed is a ready-made fictional world with a good deal of potential for further development, and the Crossed themselves seem to be strong enough villains to maintain an audience. So when William suggested other people doing more I said I wasn't averse to it, so long as a) I thought the creative teams were up to scratch, and b) my own story and characters would be left alone. Which means no sequel, no more Stan, Cindy, Thomas or Kitrick (or Horsecock, Face or Stump, come to that)- just fresh stories set in the same world.
As for David, who better? I think you'll see right from his first episode that he knows exactly what he's doing with the Crossed.
Synopsis
The story follows survivors dealing with a pandemic that causes its victims to turn into bloodthirsty maniacs. Carriers of the virus are generally known as the "Crossed" due to a large, cross-like rash that appears on their faces. While the infected still retain their basic human-level of intelligence, they engage in sadistic killing, raping, cannibalism and maiming themselves for fun.
Plot elements
The Crossed Infected
The Crossed are practically feral savages with absolutely no regard for their own self-preservation, to the point that they will need sadistic gratification: given that the Crossed are so insane that they will mutilate themselves voluntarily.
As stated by Garth Ennis:
The Crossed are people who – through infection – have given in to the absolute worst instincts that human beings can: murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, all of the most cruel and inventive kind imaginable. They are out of control, really. Their number one urge is to get their hands into normal people and commit every ghastly act they can think of – they can't fight it, and they don't want to.
Series
Crossed (Volume One)
The first story (Volume One in trade) takes place ten months after the outbreak, with flashbacks to those events, as a small group make their way toward Alaska in the belief that its low population before the outbreak will mean there are fewer Crossed to be avoided, and that the Crossed's gleeful bloodlust hampers their ability to look after themselves. However, they encounter a small group of Crossed who have a degree of self-control and subsequently begin a hunt for the survivors.
Crossed: Family Values (Volume 2)
In Family Values, the story centers on a religious family who escapes their North Carolinian ranch to survive in a mountain compound led by the protagonist Adaline's father, who, while being a strong leader against the Crossed, is a sexual predator who has routinely raped his daughters.
Crossed: 3D
3D was written with the 3D effect in mind and is not available in a 2D format. The story follows SWAT veteran Lt. Hunt MacAvoy as he leads a rescue mission into the middle of Crossed-infested New York City to rescue a stranded doctor. At 48 pages, the 3D one-shot is about a quarter of the size of one of the collected "Volumes".
Crossed: Psychopath (Volume 3)
In Psychopath, the story follows a group of survivors who pick up an injured man, Harold Lorre, who understands how the Crossed think and is tracking a specific Crossed group. Lorre is the titular psychopath, who kills members of his group of humans as he deems them problematic, passing the deaths off as the grisly acts of the Crossed. The Crossed group they are tracking killed a woman Lorre had stalked prior to the outbreak and subsequently forced a relationship upon her as they survived. After she was turned into a Crossed and killed, Lorre kept a fragment of her breast in a plastic bag.
The first Crossed Annual spins off from Wish You Were Here, featuring the lifestyle of the psychotic SBS marine Jackson. He appears to be tracking down the scientist who created the Crossed virus, an earlier version of which drove Jackson mad; this is simply a delusion of his, as he'd always been psychotic and the 'weapon' does not exist.
Crossed: Badlands (Volumes 4–17)
Badlands features shorter story arcs of varying length, by different authors.
Issues #1–3 (Of the World and Its Becoming, by Ennis and Burrows) follow a group of United Kingdom survivors traveling across Scotland. As they struggle to stay ahead of a horde of Crossed, hoping the harsh conditions of the Scottish mountains will wear down the self-destructive Crossed, the group leader, Ian, reflects on the purpose of survival when there is no hope.
Issues #4-9 (Homo Superior, by Jamie Delano and Leandro Rizzo) follow individual survivors in the Everglades – Steve, a former military woman who has become cruel and sadistic after countless traumas in her past; Greg, a jaded family man who lives off the grid to get away from his dreary home life; Leon, a teenage "swamp rat" living at a fortified "base" with his domineering extended family; and the twins Ashley and Ashlynne, who fled the city after the Crossed outbreak began. The survivors eventually meet and band together, only for their individual psychoses to ultimately cause them all to become Crossed, with Steve infecting herself willingly after realizing that she was barely different from the infected in the first place.
Issues #10–13 (Yellow Belly, by David Lapham and Burrows), a teenage survivor named Edmund (nicknamed Yellow Belly for his cowardice) relates his experience of being at a carnival where the clowns and other workers become infected in the early hours of the outbreak, turning fun times into depraved terror. In issue #13, he crosses paths with Harold Lorre, the main character of Crossed: Psychopath, who encourages Yellowbelly to use the Crossed-infested world as an opportunity to obtain power by force. Ultimately, though, he is killed by a biker woman he fled with, when he confessed his cowardice that resulted in the death of her sister-in-arms.
Issues #14–18 (The Golden Road, written by David Hine) are set just before the outbreak, in the town of Stableford, Wisconsin. The town earned the colloquial nickname "Stumptown" after its residents participated in a mass insurance fraud by "losing" limbs to collect payouts, only for the infamous transgressive writer Gideon Welles to expose their scheme and use the town as inspiration. To add insult to injury, Welles built his massive estate, Samarkand, on the outskirts of the area, separated from the town by a river crossing. The story centers on aspiring writer Clooney and his girlfriend Tabitha, whom Welles invites to Samarkand for a writers' retreat. Unfortunately, Welles is a sadist who demeans, bullies, and psychologically breaks down his guests; worse yet, a horde of Crossed has arrived in town by train. Emasculated and humiliated by Welles' debauched sex orgy with his girlfriend and other guests, Clooney uses the Crossed to turn on his fellow writers, leading to all of them being killed or turned by the horde, with an infected Welles (whose limbs are amputated, leaving just his head and torso intact) crowned by the surviving Crossed. The only survivor is Philly, the young niece of town cop Lorna; she escapes by boat after being forced to kill her aunt, who was infected when a dead Crossed fell on her.
Crossed: Wish You Were Here
In the webcomic Crossed: Wish You Were Here (written by Si Spurrier and drawn by Javier Barreno (Vol.1) and Fernando Melek (Vol.2)), former writer "Shaky" (short for Shakespeare) writes in his journal of life on the island of Cava off of the coast of Scotland, where he and a handful of other survivors try to have some semblance of society while desperately trying to keep the wandering Crossed at bay.
Crossed: Dead or Alive
The first series was originally optioned for an independently funded film, with Ennis writing the screenplay. It was going to be financed by Trigger Street Productions and produced by Michael De Luca, Jason Netter, and Kevin Spacey. In the end of 2012, however, Ennis announced that he and Avatar Press had recovered the rights to the franchise. They made plans to launch a series of webisodes in an attempt to generate interest for a feature film. In March 2013 Crossed: Dead Or Alive, an upcoming series of live action webisodes written and directed by Ennis, was announced. DOA will be accompanied by an Ennis-penned tie-in webcomic that expands and further develops the film series' concepts and characters. A goal was set to film all the episodes for Crossed: Dead or Alive season 1 in early 2014.
The webcomic was launched on November 13, 2014, with the plans to start production on the live-action series as soon as the fundraising campaign began to make money.
Crossed +100
Crossed +100, written by Alan Moore and with art by Gabriel Andrade for the first six issues, debuted in December 2014. It follows a group of humans 100 years after the outbreak. After running into a group of Crossed, they find that the infected have begun multiplying again after nearly disappearing.
Crossed +100: Mimic
A six-issue series (April 2018–October 2018) with story by Christos Gage and art by Emiliano Urdinola, set in the world of Moore's +100. It follows Julie (an uninfected archivist) and Fleshcook (a Crossed raised by one of Beauregard Salt's twelve disciples) as they try to forge an alliance between infected and uninfected. The main story is backed by Crossed +100: American History X, a series of stand-alone stories written by Pat Shand and with art by Raulo Caceres, set at various points in the decades between Crossed and Crossed +100.
Film adaptation
In August 2024, Six Studios optioned the film rights to the comic, with the screenplay written by Ennis himself. In January 2025, Rob Jabbaz was chosen to direct.