Crossed vol. 10: The Thin Red Line
Garth Ennis makes his annual return to the series he created with artist Jacen Burrows and then turned over to generally less capable hands. I don’t know why it seems that most other creators want to relish in the goriest parts of “Crossed’s” premise, but that’s usually how it turns out. Only Ennis, and Si Spurrier, tend to try and tell stories about the cost of living in this world and what it does to the survivors. This time, though, we’re getting something different. “The Thin Red Line” takes us back to the start of the Crossed outbreak and introduces us to its Patient Zero while detailing the government reaction to the whole thing. It’s a solid effort in the way the story is never less than involving in how it relates this particular scenario, though it can’t quite get out of the writer’s head.
Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain in 2008, saw his political career go up in flames thanks to an open mic. Ennis spares him that fate here, only to consign the man to an even worse one. All of the inhabitants of a small town in the country have disappeared, save for one crazed man who can’t bring himself to talk about what has happened to him. It’s also found out that anyone who comes into contact with the man’s blood goes homicidally insane in very short order. Keeping the PM safe in this situation is his head of security, Harry, who readers will remember from Ennis’ last “Crossed” story “The Fatal Englishman.” Possessed of the sharpest mind in this scenario, it’s down to Harry and his crew to bear witness to the beginning of civilization’s end.
What comes across most keenly in this volume is the utter contempt Ennis has for those in positions of power. Brown is portrayed as a clueless idiot who can’t make a decision even after being given all of the available information and the situation at hand utterly demands it. I don’t know how true this is of the man in real life, but given how well our own government has been serving us lately it feels credible enough. As does the depiction of his personal assistant. A man who clearly wants to be as powerful and important as the PM, yet lacks the common sense and self-awareness required for such things. Taking aim at political institutions and the people who inhabit them is a bit of a barn door target these days. It’s still one that, when hit here, leaves smoldering remains.
Less effective are Harry and his mates. The ultra-competent special-forces man with a down-to-earth worldview is a fairly well-worn Ennis trope at this point. As much as I like reading about people who really know what they’re doing, Harry and his actions come off as a bit too familiar to be as involving as they should be. It’s also somewhat grating at the end when the man’s big realization is that things wouldn’t have been as bad if he had simply taken matters into his own hands and stopped listening to the politicos. Hindsight being 20/20 and all, his characterization tends to come off as more hagiographic than anything else.
At least he does provide part of the means by which the story is able to get out of the writer’s head. By that I mean the majority of “The Thin Red Line” takes place in an underground bunker with people talking to and at each other about the crisis at hand. Even if the crisis is world-ending in nature, the narrative starts to feel limited and claustrophobic after a while. Ennis does keep the discussion interesting, and even manages a few surprises from time to time. Like when Brown finally makes use of Britain’s “special relationship” with the U.S. and gets in touch with the White House. Still I’m thankful for the subplot involving the two air force personnel who get caught out in the open when the epidemic starts spreading and allows us to see the chaos unfold on the ground. I also won’t deny that seeing Harry and his crew do what they’re best at when they have to go rescue said personnel is pretty entertaining too.
There’s also the matter of Patient Zero himself. All we know about him is that he’s a family man who has done the unthinkable and is slowly descending into madness as the virus that drives the Crossed does its work on him. Even though we’re witness to his transformation from the start and over the course of the volume, Ennis wisely doesn’t really de-mystify the origins of these creatures. If anything, the whole purpose behind what we see of the effect of the virus here appears to be to divest it of any supernatural origin. I appreciate that, along with how Patient Zero’s “insights” are borne out of the virus and reveal that all of the crazy talk the Crossed have spouted actually refers to things that their targets have done.
One other thing that’s worth mentioning here is how Ennis goes into omniscient narrator mode whenever the focus is on Patient Zero. This is very effective on the first page with the white text on black background obliquely referencing the man’s state of mind as he starts to succumb to the virus’ effects. That opening is gripping in its starkness and implications. Unfortunately this approach ventures into diminishing returns soon after as Ennis’ dialogue becomes more florid in the scenes following. The ones that come closest to recapturing the original’s purity are the shortest — where Harry talks about what part of God he believes in, and where the patient uses scalpels to scratch a particular itch.
On hand to illustrate all of this is Christian Zanier, whose work I don’t believe I’ve seen before. He’s not as good with characters as other artists Ennis has worked with. Sometimes his proportions are off, or their expressions don’t look right. He is good enough to get most of the critical emotion in a scene across and the man does the gory violence in the series quite well. Zanier’s work isn’t bad, I just couldn’t escape the feeling that this might’ve been better if we’d been graced with art from one of Ennis regular collaborators.
“The Thin Red Line” is the kind of story I’d like to see more of in “Crossed.” The title creatures aren’t forgotten, but they’re merely a background attraction to the main event of seeing how what’s left of humanity struggles to cope with them. Ennis’ approach to this material is welcome and engaging most of the time. When it’s not, the problem is usually because he’s relying on one of his tropes or having the cast discuss something to death. I do regret that the writer won’t be back for his annual go-round with this series — he’ll be busy with the “Crossed: Dead or Alive” live-action series being crowdfunded by Avatar right now — but I think we’ll be in good hands with the writers who will be working on the series next year. Kieron Gillen will be coming on to do an arc in the #75th issue (I believe) while none other than Alan Moore is giving us a miniseries that takes the series 100 years into the future. Looking forward to stories about the slow, gory, brutal decline of civilization becomes considerably more appealing when writers like these are involved.