Crossed: Badlands (Volumes 4–17)
Badlands features shorter story arcs of varying length, by different authors.
Issues #1–3 (Of the World and Its Becoming, by Ennis and Burrows) follow a group of United Kingdom survivors traveling across Scotland. As they struggle to stay ahead of a horde of Crossed, hoping the harsh conditions of the Scottish mountains will wear down the self-destructive Crossed, the group leader, Ian, reflects on the purpose of survival when there is no hope.
Issues #4-9 (Homo Superior, by Jamie Delano and Leandro Rizzo) follow individual survivors in the Everglades – Steve, a former military woman who has become cruel and sadistic after countless traumas in her past; Greg, a jaded family man who lives off the grid to get away from his dreary home life; Leon, a teenage "swamp rat" living at a fortified "base" with his domineering extended family; and the twins Ashley and Ashlynne, who fled the city after the Crossed outbreak began. The survivors eventually meet and band together, only for their individual psychoses to ultimately cause them all to become Crossed, with Steve infecting herself willingly after realizing that she was barely different from the infected in the first place.
Issues #10–13 (Yellow Belly, by David Lapham and Burrows), a teenage survivor named Edmund (nicknamed Yellow Belly for his cowardice) relates his experience of being at a carnival where the clowns and other workers become infected in the early hours of the outbreak, turning fun times into depraved terror. In issue #13, he crosses paths with Harold Lorre, the main character of Crossed: Psychopath, who encourages Yellowbelly to use the Crossed-infested world as an opportunity to obtain power by force. Ultimately, though, he is killed by a biker woman he fled with, when he confessed his cowardice that resulted in the death of her sister-in-arms.
Issues #14–18 (The Golden Road, written by David Hine) are set just before the outbreak, in the town of Stableford, Wisconsin. The town earned the colloquial nickname "Stumptown" after its residents participated in a mass insurance fraud by "losing" limbs to collect payouts, only for the infamous transgressive writer Gideon Welles to expose their scheme and use the town as inspiration. To add insult to injury, Welles built his massive estate, Samarkand, on the outskirts of the area, separated from the town by a river crossing. The story centers on aspiring writer Clooney and his girlfriend Tabitha, whom Welles invites to Samarkand for a writers' retreat. Unfortunately, Welles is a sadist who demeans, bullies, and psychologically breaks down his guests; worse yet, a horde of Crossed has arrived in town by train. Emasculated and humiliated by Welles' debauched sex orgy with his girlfriend and other guests, Clooney uses the Crossed to turn on his fellow writers, leading to all of them being killed or turned by the horde, with an infected Welles (whose limbs are amputated, leaving just his head and torso intact) crowned by the surviving Crossed. The only survivor is Philly, the young niece of town cop Lorna; she escapes by boat after being forced to kill her aunt, who was infected when a dead Crossed fell on her.
Issues #19–20 (Conquers All, by Si Spurrier (Crossed: Wish You Were Here) and Raulo Caceres (Crossed: Psychopath)) involve Mattias, a former criminal who was turned into one of the Crossed, but still retains a level of self-control and rationality compared to the other Crossed. A paroled enforcer for a local mobster, Mattias fell in love with his parole officer, Serena, and their relationship ended because their duties conflicted with their love. In the present, Mattias travels to the police station to find Serena, only to find she had taken her own life days earlier. After a ketamine-enhanced rampage, he passes out in a parking lot, reawakening with no memory of his search for Serena and repeating his futile journey, implying the cycle has repeated before and will repeat again.
Issues #21–24 (The Livers, by David Lapham and Miguel Garrido) rejoin Amanda, the survivor of David Lapham's Psychopath arc. Having been scarred by her experience with Lorre, she no longer trusts anyone and uses whatever means at her disposal to survive, while paranoia ultimately causes her to kill anyone who takes her in before they can get her. She falls in with The Livers, three survivors that have formed a close bond despite their mutual insanity and occasional cannibalistic tendencies, and finds a new way to survive.
Issues #25–28 (The Fatal Englishman, by Ennis and Caceres) are set five years after C-Day. Four British Army soldiers (representing each nation of the United Kingdom) go on a suicide mission to break into Porton Down and release the biological weapons, hoping it will wipe out the Crossed but leave enough humans alive for Britain to rebuild and go on an offensive war against the infected. Along the way, they become guardians of a group of children and a Catholic priest, who shares his wisdom with the title character. Eventually, after ensuring the survival of the priest and his flock, they decide against their genocidal plan, instead blowing up the entrance of Porton Down to stop anyone from using its lethal cargo before setting off to make a final stand against the Crossed. However, the leader of the group realizes that he cannot see his friends suffer a grisly end at the hands of the Crossed; thus, he shoots them dead on the way up before confronting a horde of Crossed with nothing but a half-filled pistol.
Issues #29–32 (Quisling, written by Christos Gage) follow Oliver, an anthropologist and self-proclaimed "survivor" who studies the Crossed while doing whatever it takes to prolong his life. While hiding out with a group of survivors, he observes an imposing axe-wielding member of the Crossed, dubbed "Smokey" for his fireman's garb, noting that he seems to have much greater intelligence that allows him to lead his fellow infected (paralleling the character Big Daddy from Land of the Dead). After Smokey's band corners him, Oliver betrays his fellow survivors and strikes a deal with the Crossed, helping them hunt other survivors while hoping to escape or find a group capable enough to fight back. As his guilt grows and rumors of other "Super-Crossed" reach him (featuring a cameo of the twins from the Homo Superior arc), Oliver realizes that Smokey is far too dangerous to leave alive; especially when the Crossed reads his journal and assaults a nuclear base for its weapons. Ultimately, Oliver gives his life to stop Smokey's plans, willingly infecting himself to prevent his "partner" from using him any longer. Enraged, Smokey slaughters his band of Crossed before storming out of the base and heading to Florida to find more "Super-Crossed" like him.
Issues #33–36 (Breakdown, by Lapham and Miguel Ruiz) pick up with Amanda hunting for the Livers and forced to hide from a religiously themed tribe of Crossed pursuing the same prey. She hides in a crawlspace for days, but is devastated when the Crossed bring in her two Liver companions – one captive, and the other infected – and she loses the strength of the delusions they supported. She attempts to re-integrate with another group of survivors, but her growing insanity (represented by hallucinations of Harold Lorre from Psychopath) drives her to kill them all before returning to the crawlspace, determined to remain until she either dies or overcomes her madness.
Issues #37–39 (American Quitters, by Spurrier and Rafael Ortiz) follow the odd couple of a stoned-out hippie and a hardcore biker traveling cross-country to San Diego to die by the ultimate overdose and while exacting revenge on a rival biker gang leader, respectively. Along the way, they pick up a pregnant Mexican woman fleeing from the drug lord father, trying to reach an island sanctuary off the Baja California peninsula. Ultimately, 'no lesson is learned' as all three of them die in unexpected ways; the biker is overrun by Crossed while overdosing on the ultimate high, the hippy is killed fulfilling the biker's revenge, and the pregnant woman is torn apart by her infected relatives on the island.
Issues #40–43 (Gore Angels, by David Hine) look into the broken mind of an abused girl during the early days of the Crossed epidemic in rural Japan. After being drugged, gang-raped, and humiliated on the Internet while in America, Emiko channels her anger and shame into Gore Angels, an incredibly violent manga sold under a pseudonym with the help of her friend Satoshi. By chance, one of her few friends from America comes to Japan with the instigator of the incident (and the latter's girlfriend) in hopes of easing Emiko's pain, but everything goes off the rails when the Crossed begin to emerge...
Issues #44–49 (Grave New World, by Daniel Way and Emiliano Urdinola) follow a group of U.S. Coast Guard personnel who hope to outlast the Crossed by setting out on a boat and finding an island to call home. However, taking on a pair of survivors leads to a whole new array of problems, including a horde of Crossed pirates and the increasingly erratic behavior of their own Captain.
Issues #50–56 (The Thin Red Line, by Ennis and Christian Zanier) reintroduce the four men from The Fatal Englishman, revealing them to have once been security for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The story shows the very beginning of the Crossed outbreak, focusing on Britain's efforts to contain the madness and discover its source; however, they soon realize the situation is far worse than they ever imagined.
Issues #57–61 (by Justin Jordan and Georges Duarte) follow Esperanza and Jane, a pair of young women fleeing Alejandro, Esperanza's Crossed brother, and the horde of infectees he commands. They eventually find safe haven at a woodland camp commanded by Sutter, a hardened survivalist with plans of his own that have little to do with the survival of his campmates...
Issues #62–70 (by Lapham and Francisco Manna) concern Gavin Edward Land, a former police detective seeking vengeance against the people who raped and murdered his daughter. As he works through his list and the Crossed outbreak in San Diego, U.S., he learns more than he wants to know when Wentz, his final target, seems to have turned over a new leaf after the apocalypse.
Issues #71–74 (Five Bloody Fingers, written by David Hine) focus on Uboshita Satoshi, Emiko's friend briefly seen in Gore Angels. When C-Day breaks out in Japan, Satoshi sets out to find his blood brothers, the Five Bloody Fingers, and help them survive C-Day. Finding Hazuki, the girl he loves (and one of his blood brothers) turns to be a harder task than he thought, as her father is a yakuza boss who is also on the lookout for her. The friends find themselves making a stand against the Crossed at a Japanese cosplay convention, where their blood oath may be tested with the relentless threat of the Crossed...assuming that Boss Yamada does not first feed them to Usama, his pet lion, in the end all 5 infect each other, renewing their blood oath, becoming infected, and die fighting other Crossed.
Issues #75–80 (Homo Tortor, written by Kieron Gillen) show two simultaneous narratives.
- The main story concerns the attempts of a survivor group, led by college student Washington, to find a possible cure to the Crossed from the notes of Professor Nelson, a man who believed that a race of early humans similar to the Crossed nearly wiped out humanity 75,000 years ago (See the Toba catastrophe theory). Hounded by the Crossed at every turn, Washington's group eventually discovers Professor Nelson's bunker, which contains information about the early humans he dubbed "Homo tortor" ("man who tortures").
- The second narrative goes 75,000 years in the past, where a group of early humans, led by the young hunter Lion, are captured by the "Blood Men" (Homo tortor) after their village is wiped out; they are subsequently brought to the Blood Men's "city of cities" to fight in an arena against men and giant beasts that the Blood Men had collected. When the "festivities" are cut short by a Crossed outbreak, Lion and his group must attempt to survive the ensuing carnage.
Ultimately, Washington discovers that Professor Nelson made up everything about Homo tortor and has become Crossed during the outbreak. Along with his similarly infected assistant (and Washington's college girlfriend), Amy, he wrote the story not to falsify history, but as a vision of the society he intends to create with his band of Crossed.
Issues #81–86 (The Lesser of Two Evils, by Mike Wolfor) begins shortly after C-Day, with a group of survivors stranded on a partially-collapsed overpass. Although they are safe from the lingering Crossed, things begin to unravel after they are joined by Morgan and Olivia, a pair of women who claim to have survived the Crossed due to their "bible": "Surviving D-Day" a best-selling "zombie survival guide" novel (similar to The Zombie Survival Guide).
Issues #87–90 (Shrink, by Max Bemis and Fernando Melek) follow two brothers; the straight-laced psychologist Jack and the hedonistic bully Clancy. As Jack and Tiffany (a close friend of his) prepare themselves for the day the Crossed outbreak finally hits their suburban neighborhood, Clancy crashes by and asks Jack for a favor; after willingly infecting himself with the Crossed plague, he has his brother lock him in the basement and attempt to psychoanalyze his Crossed self, hoping that Jack can learn something of importance about the outbreak and its source.
Issues #91–92 (Anti-Crossed, by Bemis and German Erramouspe) follow a group of 5 survivors, 4 men and a female author named Leigha, as they survive in a barricaded comic book store while struggling with dwindling morale and growing boredom. It is soon revealed that the male survivors – all massive comic book fans – had taken Leigha hostage early in the outbreak, and have since been periodically raping her at gunpoint. Bored, the guys make a deal with Leigha: if she writes them an "Anti-Crossed" comic, they'll stop maltreating her and give her other "privileges." Leigha reluctantly agrees, making a comic that fulfills all of her captor's twisted fantasies, but things may change when two strangers arrive at the store.
Issues #93–99 (by Gage and Fernando Heinz) begins by following a band of survivors led by Cody, an opportunistic man who designed disaster shelters for the elite before stealing one for himself when C-Day hit. His state-of-the-art bunker serves the group well until it runs afoul of Smokey, the "Super-Crossed" last seen in the "Quisling" arc. After being driven out and left at Smokey's mercy, Cody saves himself by offering to help Smokey mold the Crossed into a coherent society, advising him on ways to control their bloodlust and promising fresh victims by breeding uninfected like cattle. When this inevitably fails (in part due to a remorseful Cody sacrificing himself to undo his own work), Smokey seeks out other Super-Crossed like himself, eventually finding the Crossed twins from the Homo Superior arc. With the aid of an uninfected sailor met during the journey for the twins, Smokey establishes a functional homestead of Crossed followers with the aim of outlasting the expected short-lived lifespan attributed to most Crossed.
Issue #100 (also by Gage and Fernando Heinz) follows Smokey and the twins as they try to fulfill the former's dream of ending the Crossed's self-destructive nature. Although they establish a reasonably functional homestead with dozens of followers, Smokey remains depressed and tells an old sailor that it is a far cry from the new society he hoped to create. The children he fathered with the twins also seem no more intelligent than regular Crossed, leading Smokey to believe their species is doomed to die out within a generation. Years later, the aging Smokey kills the old sailor by quickly breaking his neck, sparing him from a slow and painful death at the hands of the other Crossed. Shortly after, Smokey is betrayed and left for dead by the twins and his own son 'Cunt', now revealed to have been a "Super-Crossed" the entire time; the twins explain that they prefer immediate self-indulgence over long-term planning. Smokey survives the attempted assassination by jumping into a river, emerging later and limping off to fight another day with a smile on his face.
.jpg)
