‘Crossed: Volume 1’ and ‘Void Rivals, Volume 1: More Than Meets The Eye’
There is nothing better in life (sorry Conan, it’s true…) than waking up late, and not having to jump straight out of bed, because it’s the first day of your Christmas Break. The rest of the day didn’t quite hit those heights but I’m a little bit closer to being sorted, for Christmas, so I’m taking it as a win :o)
While I wasn’t out and about, doing Christmas stuff/picking up more tablets/eating a really nice burger, I took some time out to make a dent in my mini ‘ComicBook TBR Pile’. Two books down now, one all apocalyptic and the other set in a franchise that I don’t normally read at all…
‘Crossed: Volume 1’ – Ennis, Burrows (Avatar)
A world like this, it finds a way to damn us all…
In the blink of an eye, humanity is lost. The Crossed are upon us. Men, women and children alike fall victim to the mystery infection that makes killers out of parents and rapists out of lovers. Ruthless, beserk and evil beyond measure, these cackling demons spread their plague across the Earth – until our species teeters on the brink of final extinction.
Now, a small band of survivors make their cautious way across a deserted America, existing in a state of constant terror, only too aware that death beyond description lurks around almost every corner. Their determination to survive is all they have in common but in the world of the Crossed, survival comes at a cost. By the end, each will discover exactly what they’ll do to stay alive… and in a world of monsters, just how easy it is to lose your own humanity too.
There is no hope. There are no heroes. No one is coming to save us.
My reading is heading down an ‘apocalyptic path’ at the moment, the timing of which kind of makes me wonder how I’m subconsciously feeling about Christmas, hmmm…
Anyway, I’ve been watching a lot of ‘Walking Dead’ at the moment, which got me thinking about ‘post-apocalyptic survival horror, and that (more or less) inevitably led me back to ‘Crossed’, a book that I last read some years ago.
‘Crossed’ is basically Ennis going all out to ‘out apocalypse’ all other apocalypses and… he’s not far off. I honestly couldn’t choose between ‘Crossed’ and Warren Ellis’ ‘Black Gas’, for that dubious award, maybe that’s a post for another time.
Back to ‘Crossed’ though, which proves to be an unflinching look (thanks in no small part to Jacen Burrows’ no-compromise approach to the art-work, damn…) at just what we are capable of in a world without restraint. If you can think of it, odds are that one of the Crossed are doing it to a victim, somewhere. What’s perhaps more interesting though is the position that this puts the survivors in. The question of how far the survivors will sacrifice their own humanity, to stay alive, is one that Ennis has a lot of fun with, asking the reader some really tough questions with what he asks of his cast.
‘Crossed’ is a great read then but also a frustrating one as the timeline has a nasty habit of jumping back with no real notice given. The number of times I thought ‘hang on, I thought he was dead…’, only to realise that we’d jumped into the past again… It’s not a deal-breaker but having to work out ‘who was where and when’ broke the flow of the narrative for me.
‘Void Rivals: Volume 1, ‘More Than Meets The Eye’ – Kirkman, De Felici, Lopes (Image)
War rages around the Sacred Ring, where the last remnants of two worlds have collapsed around a black hole in a never-ending war.
However, when pilot Darak and his rival Solila both crash on a desolate planet, these two enemies must find a way to escape together. But are they alone on this strange planet? And what dark forces await that threaten the entire universe?
This was a complete impulse buy, the other day, based on a random conversation with the guy in Piranha Comics. Once I’d bought it though, I couldn’t not read it and…
It kind of goes without saying that if you follow all the ‘Energon Universe’ storyline (Transformers) then you are going to get a lot more out of it than I did, I haven’t read a ‘Transformers’ comic since the 1980s. Having said that though, Kirkman pushing the ‘Transformers bit’ to one side, and concentrating on the war between Agorra and Zertonia, really worked for me as I found myself reading through an entertaining slice of space opera with an intriguing mystery on the side. And Lorenzo De Felici’s artwork complemented the story perfectly, really captures the ‘alien-ness’ of the setting in the best way.
I don’t know that I’m in a huge hurry to catch up with the series, as a whole, but that's more about me not being a big Transformers fan. I love space opera though and ‘Void Rivals’ more than did the business as far as that went, I'm interested to see where it goes next.
While I wasn’t out and about, doing Christmas stuff/picking up more tablets/eating a really nice burger, I took some time out to make a dent in my mini ‘ComicBook TBR Pile’. Two books down now, one all apocalyptic and the other set in a franchise that I don’t normally read at all…
‘Crossed: Volume 1’ – Ennis, Burrows (Avatar)
A world like this, it finds a way to damn us all…
In the blink of an eye, humanity is lost. The Crossed are upon us. Men, women and children alike fall victim to the mystery infection that makes killers out of parents and rapists out of lovers. Ruthless, beserk and evil beyond measure, these cackling demons spread their plague across the Earth – until our species teeters on the brink of final extinction.
Now, a small band of survivors make their cautious way across a deserted America, existing in a state of constant terror, only too aware that death beyond description lurks around almost every corner. Their determination to survive is all they have in common but in the world of the Crossed, survival comes at a cost. By the end, each will discover exactly what they’ll do to stay alive… and in a world of monsters, just how easy it is to lose your own humanity too.
There is no hope. There are no heroes. No one is coming to save us.
My reading is heading down an ‘apocalyptic path’ at the moment, the timing of which kind of makes me wonder how I’m subconsciously feeling about Christmas, hmmm…
Anyway, I’ve been watching a lot of ‘Walking Dead’ at the moment, which got me thinking about ‘post-apocalyptic survival horror, and that (more or less) inevitably led me back to ‘Crossed’, a book that I last read some years ago.
‘Crossed’ is basically Ennis going all out to ‘out apocalypse’ all other apocalypses and… he’s not far off. I honestly couldn’t choose between ‘Crossed’ and Warren Ellis’ ‘Black Gas’, for that dubious award, maybe that’s a post for another time.
Back to ‘Crossed’ though, which proves to be an unflinching look (thanks in no small part to Jacen Burrows’ no-compromise approach to the art-work, damn…) at just what we are capable of in a world without restraint. If you can think of it, odds are that one of the Crossed are doing it to a victim, somewhere. What’s perhaps more interesting though is the position that this puts the survivors in. The question of how far the survivors will sacrifice their own humanity, to stay alive, is one that Ennis has a lot of fun with, asking the reader some really tough questions with what he asks of his cast.
‘Crossed’ is a great read then but also a frustrating one as the timeline has a nasty habit of jumping back with no real notice given. The number of times I thought ‘hang on, I thought he was dead…’, only to realise that we’d jumped into the past again… It’s not a deal-breaker but having to work out ‘who was where and when’ broke the flow of the narrative for me.
‘Void Rivals: Volume 1, ‘More Than Meets The Eye’ – Kirkman, De Felici, Lopes (Image)
War rages around the Sacred Ring, where the last remnants of two worlds have collapsed around a black hole in a never-ending war.
However, when pilot Darak and his rival Solila both crash on a desolate planet, these two enemies must find a way to escape together. But are they alone on this strange planet? And what dark forces await that threaten the entire universe?
This was a complete impulse buy, the other day, based on a random conversation with the guy in Piranha Comics. Once I’d bought it though, I couldn’t not read it and…
It kind of goes without saying that if you follow all the ‘Energon Universe’ storyline (Transformers) then you are going to get a lot more out of it than I did, I haven’t read a ‘Transformers’ comic since the 1980s. Having said that though, Kirkman pushing the ‘Transformers bit’ to one side, and concentrating on the war between Agorra and Zertonia, really worked for me as I found myself reading through an entertaining slice of space opera with an intriguing mystery on the side. And Lorenzo De Felici’s artwork complemented the story perfectly, really captures the ‘alien-ness’ of the setting in the best way.
I don’t know that I’m in a huge hurry to catch up with the series, as a whole, but that's more about me not being a big Transformers fan. I love space opera though and ‘Void Rivals’ more than did the business as far as that went, I'm interested to see where it goes next.
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