When it comes to post-apocalyptic zombie adventures you usually think of The Walking Dead. Crossed gives the reader a fantastic adventure in a different way than most zombie comics do. We’re not getting the entire picture or seeing a group of people trying to save the world. We get a slice of life pieces in different time periods and the actual “zombie” virus is never explained, just theorized.  The first 40 chapters range from different time periods of the virus invasion of the crossed. The whole comic saga is made up of 4-6 issue mini-series and some are picked back up later on.

The best part of the series is the gore and gruesome detail. There’s tons of nudity, sex, rape, murder, torture, and everything you would expect in a zombie apocalypse. The art is graphics, detailed, and gorgeous. You can tell real dead bodies and gore was used as a reference because I have never seen a comic with this much realistic detail. The crossed are ruthless, kill and have sex with everything in sight, and love pain. It’s passed on via bodily fluids and that’s all we know. There’s no cure, no stopping or slowing it down.

Honestly, there was never a name for the virus either and I kind of like that. The virus is a mystery throughout and everyone is just trying to survive the best they can and hoping to wait for the crossed to die out. There was one problem with this series and that was issue 40-60 or so. These 20 issues must have forgotten what the whole series was about and became more about internal non-crossed affairs and the crossed took a back seat. It got boring and really annoying, but after around issue 60, it did pick back up.

Overall, Crossed: Badlands is one of the best comic series I have ever read, but it’s not for the light-hearted. This is a graphic, gruesome, and extremely explicit series but that’s what I love about it. You won’t find a single comic this insane.