EDGE #1

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Saturday, May 04, 2002

Some series are easy to join in media res, while with others it's much better to begin at the beginning. In EDGE, the second of CrossGen's two compendium series beginning this month, which features the CrossGen titles RUSE, MYSTIC, SIGIL, SCION, and THE FIRST, it's mostly a case of joining a story already in progress. And heaven help you if you don't like reading long text passages in a comic book.

The nature of CrossGen's universe lends itself better to this format than any other company, though - not even Marvel and DC, as continuity-driven as their universes are, pays this much attention to making sure that what happens in one series gets echoed in all the rest. (Batman's "non-fugitive" appearance in JLA this month, for instance, or the virtual destruction of Washington in AVENGERS that has yet to be mentioned in any other Marvel series, are two cases in point.) Although each series can be enjoyed on its own, there's an overarching storyline that connects them, mainly through the mysterious sigil which also serves as the company's logo and which gives so many of these characters their power.

The theme in this compendium seems more "science fiction"-oriented, though that's a hard call with series like MYSTIC and SCION rounding out the roll call. Much as with FORGE, CrossGen's other compendium series seemingly devoted to their more "sword and sorcery"-oriented series, there's something here for everyone - and the quality is still uneven. There's also something of a tendency in all these series to borrow from previously successful genre tropes, though sometimes the new combinations in which these tropes occur are startling.

This volume leads off with the only series we start from Chapter One, RUSE, written by Mark Waid and drawn by Butch Guise and Michael Perkins, and the only series whose roots are showing worse than a bad hair dye job. Set in an alternate Victorian era, RUSE follows the adventures of Simon Archard, a heroic combination of Sherlock Holmes and John Steed, with a little bit of Doctor Who mixed in. His companion Emma Bishop, however, is much more than she appears - as is the mysterious Miranda Cross, whose powers are equal and opposite to Emma's own. Waid does a wonderful job of blending all these elements into a believable storyline, making this one of the few stories in this volume you'll wish you had more of. Guise and Perkins's artwork compliments Waid's script handsomely - although all CrossGen artwork is a bit overly ornate for my tastes, their artwork has the distinction of actually fitting the story they're illustrating.

The artwork starts going a bit over the top in MYSTIC, a series about a young woman named Giselle who is given the sigil by a mysterious stranger and who accidentally becomes the mystical protector of her magic-based world. While looking at Brandon Peterson and John Dell's lavish artwork for two issues is a bit like drinking a glass of Ovaltine with chocolate syrup and honey added in, Ron Marz's script makes this one of the most entertaining ongoing series in the whole compendium. This one might actually make you go out and buy the two collections of the first fourteen issues - it's really that good.

Mark Waid's SIGIL, however, isn't quite as gripping. In this science fiction series, the Planetary Union has been at war with the reptilian Saurians (with a name like that, what else would they be?) for centuries. An ex-soldier named Sam Rey, however, may turn the tide of the battle after (you guessed it) a mysterious stranger gives him the sigil. In this issue he reveals the secret that his military has been hiding from its people - that the Saurians eat their captives and gain knowledge in that way. If you're thinking this series looks and sounds like a combination of STARSHIP TROOPERS and the anime version of LENSMAN, you wouldn't be far off.

The compendium goes somewhat downhill from there. While Ron Marz's script for SCION isn't necessarily bad, it's not the sort of series that's as easy to join at Chapter 15. Not only is the backstory incredibly complex and confusing, making this series' text piece a nightmare to comprehend, the story in this issue doesn't much further that plot. On the plus side, Jim Cheung and Don Hillsman II's artwork for this one fits its story just as well as the RUSE artwork does. With most of the other series, the artwork itself is so incredibly intrusive that it's sometimes a chore to concentrate on the story. Not so here, though the story itself may be the real chore.

Finally, THE FIRST provides a chore both for the eyes and the mind. Although the premise of two groups of god-like beings separated by their natures into two warring camps sounds promising, this series is another one nearly impossible to join without having read the first seven issues. Sadly, the three issues collected here don't quite alleviate that confusion. For one thing, the characters all look very much alike thanks to Bart Sears and Andy Smith. For another, writer Barbara Kesel - whose MERIDIAN series in FORGE suffers from similar problems - doesn't do enough to differentiate them, as she's seemingly more interested in the complexity of their civil war.

Although this compendium has two of the most interesting series that CrossGen has to offer, it has those other three as well - and if I remember my school grades correctly, two out of five isn't a great average. Still, CrossGen may have a good idea here, and if those other three series can eventually grab us while "already in progress" the way RUSE does right out of the gate, this compendium series may yet be worth the ten dollars a month.

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