Comic-Con:
The Aftermath, Part One
CrossGen
Comics may have the most dedicated fans in comics, and they want still
more…
Even if you weren’t near
the CrossGen Comics booth at San Diego, you could easily spot the staff.
Not because of that certain gleam in their eyes, though Mark Waid does
have it. Nope. They were the guys wearing the football jerseys.
“That’s because we’re
a big team…a good team,” offered CrossGen Director of Corporate Communications
Ian Feller later. “We are a united company, not just because we’re forced
to wear these things, but because we’re all part owners of this company.”
In two short years CrossGeneration Comics has catapulted out
of nowhere to become a huge hit with readers. And they’re showing no
signs of stopping. At San Diego, their booth rivaled the big two, DC
and Marvel, in size. And thanks to their recruitment of some of the
best talents in the business, Feller is right: they are a good team.
Perhaps no one better
illustrated the team spirit than fan favorite George Perez. The popular
artist sketched and signed for 30 hours out of the 38 that the exhibit
hall remained open to the public. After all was said and done, Perez
had done 203 sketches of anything and everything that a fan would ask.
“He is a machine,” commented
Feller, who reminded us that Perez will be finishing up a run on CrossGen
Chronicles before diving whole-hog into the long-awaited JLA/Avengers.
If you couldn’t find Perez at San Diego, the CrossGen booth still
had at least six creators signing at all times, a feat they will repeat
August 17-19 at WizardWorld in Chicago. Yes, Perez will be there, too.
The team spirit doesn’t end with CrossGen creators and staff, though.
![](images/ng1t.jpg)
Feller put out a call
to fans for help at the convention, and definitely got an answer. A
similar situation had worked out for CrossGen at MegaCon in Orlando,
so they thought it worth repeating the experiment. Seven fans came to
San Diego specifically to work the CrossGen booth, helping with line
control and serving as runners for the staff. Others wandered in at
the show and asked if there was a need, so Feller signed them up, too.
“We couldn’t have done
it without them,” he said, “it’s nice to have that kind of support.”
Fans have good reason
to support CrossGen. While the company did not make any earth-shattering
announcements at the convention (nor “…get into any controversy like
some of the other publishers did,” Feller added), the booth maintained
a steady flow of traffic. Instead of flash, the company offered more
of its solidly entertaining books, gaining a lot of interest in upcoming
projects.
Among those is Ruse,
a Victorian thriller from Mark Waid and Butch Guice. Though set in the
same universe as the other CrossGen books, Ruse will be the first
book that doesn’t have a Sigil-bearer (the unifying mark of power that
runs through all CrossGen books). Instead, it’s intended just to be
a solid mystery book in the Sherlock Holmes vein.
Following the release
of Ruse, CrossGen will offer up Negation in November,
and The Path next February. Fans attending WizardWorld will be
able to get a look at them all. As a result of our San Diego experience,
CrossGen may just have got us on the hook, too.
Derek
McCaw
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