From Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe, John J. Hill, and Image Comics.

I was not prepared for this book. My original understanding is that this would be a crossover between Donny Cates’s previous comics. Nothing against any of those titles, but that didn’t draw me in. My friend Joe couldn’t say enough good things about it so I checked out another article with some preview images. That was all it took and I immediately ordered the first issue.

This is put all the toys out and see how everything can possibly come together without any rules. Biff Bam Pow, out of no where a super hero comic book world appears and lays over top of a major US city. Tights and flights galore. Beams and rays and also deaths. The city is contained in a bubble. But now the world knows that super heroes can exist and that creates more mysteries.

In this new world comics are seen as gospel as all of the “normal” people look for any kind of explanation in order to navigate this changed landscape. Comics are loved by some and hated by others. Placing blame on all that is happening in their worlds. There is a twist taking this idea of the comic world entering the real world that blew me away and one panel added this book to my monthly pull list. Because the book is about comics on the page becoming real that allows a lot of play on the panels.

It’s a love letter to that box of toys scattered in the living room. But it’s also a love so strong that some of the toys are going to get broken. By understanding the characters and the usual way of play it is inevitable that some figures/characters who are safe within their own domain will not survive this new open world. We all love the standard comic formulas but when something like Crossover comes along to carve new paths with familiar tools it leaps to the front of the line.

I want every potential reader to go in with the same minimum knowledge that I did. No billion dollar companies. No untouchable IP. This looks to be a mystery, and adventure, and a love story that I can already see future writers and artists claim as the most influential comic book of their youth.

Plenty more comic reviews to come in 2021!