Crossed

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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At least the title is honest. This comic CROSSED multiple lines!

Crossed is a comic book series created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Jacen Burrows and published by Avatar Press. While containing many different stories, it takes place in a world where a virus turns people into utterly depraved psychopaths who attack anything on sight regardless of relation.

Plot

A mysterious virus appears, turning its victims into the Crossed, people with a cross-shaped rash on their faces who carry out their deepest and darkest desires on virtually anything in sight, whether it's a man, woman, child, or even an animal.

Why It Crossed the Line

1. While not as bad as Mai-chan's Daily Life, it has just about some of the, if not THE SICKEST content in a comic book and any form of media. Constant revolting scenes make it difficult to stomach for anyone, and it's honestly surprising this wasn't made into an underground comic. It ticks just about every box for what kind of things never to do, violence against children, genital mutilation, sexual violence against women, endless revolting imagery, and mothers eating their children! No joke! What's worse is that it's seemingly trying to be funny about some of it even though no one in their right mind would laugh at it.
   • in one case, you will see a Crossed sever a victim's penis and wearing it as a necklace.
2. It's incredibly violent. While that might sound like fun, it isn't. While Garth Ennis has made plenty of violent series, at least those have good writing and a darkly comical tone, Crossed just takes it way too seriously and is very mean-spirited about it.
3. The characters are often ridiculously awful. Unlike the characters from The Boys and its television series, these characters are not in the slightest bit likable for the most part. They constantly do almost worse things than the Crossed, betray or kill each other for the pettiest reasons, and are just either extremely stereotypical, grating, or both.
   • What's worse is that the likable characters often get killed off too early for little to no reason, which forces you to spend more time with characters you couldn't possibly care less about. Also, in case you're wondering, some of them are rapists. Speaking of which...
4. Rape: There are constant scenes of rape because the Crossed like doing that with literally every human they see. Unlike a similarly messed up, yet endearing series, this one is just utterly degrading because of how graphically it's shown and how it only seems to be there to degrade characters, mostly the females. There are constant scenes of sodomy and rape with every detail shown.
5. On that note, there's also constant nudity that's shown in extremely graphic detail way too often, even if it's of children.
6. The stories often feel like more generic apocalypse versions of The Walking Dead, only with awful characters who do stupid things.
7. Constant swearing: While a bit of profanity might make an otherwise seemingly uninspired comic interesting and daring, this uses it FAR too much to the point where most of the characters sound like grade-school children who barely learned dirty words, and it doesn't help how much they make extremely revolting threats and use the c-word.
   • On that topic, there's one Crossed villain that bears the name of Horsecock.
8. The Crossed are way too overpowered. While it's kind of interesting to see something other than mindless shambling zombies, they also swear even more than the regular people if that's even possible, and somehow always know exactly what to do to win in every possible situation.
9. Confusing storylines wherein major events happen completely off-screen for some reason and are never explained or mentioned again. Some also have no ending at all. Did the writers themselves even know what they were doing?
10. All in all, the series is just an endless parade of brutality that revels in the worst aspects of humanity and takes itself way too seriously to the point where it can be difficult to enjoy, even if you're a gorehound.

Qualities That Did Not Cross the Line

1. The artwork and character designs are very good, despite the extremely disturbing scenes.
2. Some of the stories in the series are pretty good, like +100.
3. Despite how overpowered the Crossed are, it's interesting to see them aside from the zombies.

Legacy

The Sadness (Chinese: 哭悲; pinyin: Kū bēi), a 2021 Taiwanese body horror film, was heavily inspired by the Crossed comic book series.

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