Written by Donny Cates
Drawn by Geoff Shaw
Published by Image Comics

This is a new series that I’ve been looking forward to ever since I first read about it. It’s a very intriguing concept, one of which I’ve thought of myself before, but Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw have beaten me to it.

This series is meant to take place in our world, the “real world”, and the premise is that back in January 2017, suddenly all the major fictional comic-book superheroes (and presumably the villains, although that’s not expressly stated) appeared in the city of Denver, Colorado. For legal reasons of course Cates can’t be too specific about the characters, but a line of narration says it’s everyone “from green men with fins on their head, to men dressed as bats, or spiders, or Gods with giant hammers,” so we’re talking Marvel, DC, and Image, at least. And for some reason, they were all fighting. It was like a superhero crossover event come to life. Except, it being real, it lead to millions of real people being killed in the ensuing carnage. We’re told that this event lasted for two months when suddenly an impenetrable force field was erected over the entire state of Colorado so that no one could get out or in.

The story jumps ahead to the present day. We learn that in the aftermath of this event, which is referred to by the population as “The Event,” the world has changed. Superhero comics and their publishers have mostly gone out of business, as people consider them to be evil reminders of The Event, and cosplayers are feared and hated. We’re introduced to a young woman named Ellipses, she’s a survivor of The Event who was evacuated from Colorado before the force field went up, but her parents were left behind. She now lives in Provo, Utah, still likes to dress in a costume, despite the abuse she occasionally suffers from strangers for it, and works at a comic-store, which is the last store that still sells old superhero comics. Whether that’s the last store in Utah or the entire nation is not clear, but the store constantly has protestors outside, like it’s an abortion clinic, holding up signs that say things like “God Hates Masks” and “Pray The Capes Away.” While at the store there suddenly appears a young girl named Ava, who is a comic-book character, as is evidenced by the way she looks. Her appearance freaks out the rest of the customers in the store who all run out. Ellipses’ boss, Otto, wants to call the cops, but Ellipses stops him and tries to find out from Ava how she got out of Colorado. But news of Ava’s appearances reaches the protestors outside, and it looks like things are heading to a violent confrontation.

That’s all I’ll say for now, but I thoroughly enjoyed this issue. It gave us just enough information about this world that we’re seeing, but still leaving plenty to be discovered. And it’s drawn well. I’m excited to see where this series goes.

CROSSOVER #1