Crossgen Comics founder Mark Alessi’s death went by relatively unnoticed, as opposed to his comic book contemporary Stan Lee. Which is sad considering Alessi was also a trailblazer in the industry. I remember when I stumbled across Marvel’s redux of the CrossGen Line of comics while in a comic shop a few years back. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, Crossgen was a revolutionary line of comics started by Alessi, who took a more corporate and businesslike approach to making comics. His line of comics focused on more nontraditional fare like Sci-fi and high fantasy, employed established writers like Ron Marz (Green Lantern) and Mark Waid (The Flash), and broke out new superstar artists. Alessi employed a different approach to how a comics company operated, bringing in its artists and writers as employees with salaries and corporate benefits instead of the work-for-hire, contract model used by Marvel and DC. The guaranteed pay was a huge selling point for top notch writing talent. Its first four books were very well-received and set the stage for an expansion of the comic line.
So if CrossGen was so successful then, you might wonder what the heck they were doing as an imprint of Marvel?
I believe the mistakes Crossgen made are the mistakes that a lot of upstart companies made. The biggest one is overexpansion. Crossgen’s first four titles (Sigil, Mystic, Meridian and Scion, respectively) were successful, so they added a few more books to their lineup (Crossgen Chronicles, Sojurn, the First and Negation) and they in turn begat more books (Ruse, Route 666, Way of the Rat and The Path), which was followed up by EVEN MORE titles (I’m going to stop naming them now), all within the span of three years. Simply put, there wasn’t enough shelf space at comic shops, and certainly not enough comic readers to support all of those books. Crossgen couldn’t keep it up, and they eventually went bankrupt. One of their comics got movie optioned by Disney, and eventually the rest of their assets were scooped up by Disney, who passed them off to Marvel, who published a couple of paltry book before letting the imprint die on the vine.
For the record, I DID NOT LIKE Marvel’s treatment of the Crossgen properties. I had a chance to read a few of the originals, and I found the storytelling to be excellent, and I don’t like that Marvel did nothing to preserve, rehash or continue the original storylines and characters (with the exception of Ruse, which is still true to the original). It flies in the face of everything the original Crossgen had set up. But that’s neither here nor there.
So how did having so many titles work against Crossgen? Simple: they spread themselves too thin too fast. I believe they assumed their growth in readership could sustain more titles.
Furthermore, they expanded into a lot of uncharted genres at once. This was also a mistake. They were making books about everything from spies to pirates. Nowadays, horror books are all the rage, but Route 666 was among the first mainstream books to explore it. The book was before its time, and people weren’t ready for it. Now, if a regular business took a gamble like that, most folk would think it too big a risk, but since it’s “only” comics, it would turn out okay. It didn’t. Trying to please everyone at once usually winds up with you pleasing nobody.
The final straw was announcing a creator-owned imprint, which they had neither the means nor truly the intent to support. That idea was stillborn, and a harbinger of the fall of the company to come.
My theory is that in it’s intent to be on the same level as the Marvels and DCs, and even Image and Dark Horse, they expanded too far too fast, and put out more product than their customers could support, without taking the proper moves to bring in new customers (yet another business mistake). They put out these new books with a minimum of marketing and promotion and expected the books to either sell themselves or for their loyal Crossgen readers to shell out more money to try the new stuff. A big company like McDonald’s might be able to get away with that: a small company like Fatburger can’t. Crossgen should have paced themselves better and taken the time to heavily market each book using media outside of the usual comics venues (ie comic shop ads, comic cons and the old Wizard magazine). The internet was pretty strong by then, also. They should have utilized that resource better, also.
Personally, I feel that if they had simply stuck to their original four books, (maybe with two or three hit books like Sojurn, Negation and Ruse – basically keeping their book lineup small) and devoted more time and resources to heavily promoting those books, then Crossgen would still be an independent company, maybe with success comparable to the big four, which would put them in a much better position to expand and maybe land a few movie deals (one of their books, Abadazad, was in this process when Crossgen went under. Too little, too late, I guess). With the popularity of horror books and comic based movies at an all-time high, now would be the perfect time to strike with those.
So for all you aspiring entrepreneurs, let this be a lesson to you. Try not to overextend your reach too fast. Once you’ve found a niche you’re successful with, focus on building up what works, and expand within reason, making sure that each step you take is on solid ground before taking the next one. Research the market you’re in and make sure that it can support your new expansion idea. If it can’t, then there is nothing wrong with taking an idea before its time and letting it marinate until you and the market are ready for it. There’s nothing wrong with taking risks, but make sure you understand what you’re risking. And if there’s anyway you can minimize the risk, do so.
If you want to relive the glory days of Crossgen, they still have books available. Here’s one of their better titles.
