First published back in November of 2014 Garth Ennis’ ‘Crossed: Dead Or Alive – Issue Two’ formed the second part in a two-comic mini-series from the ‘Crossed’ franchise.
The two ‘Dead Or Alive’ comics were released as a special limited edition run to raise funds for the proposed live-action series. The comics themselves collected together the short webcomics that Ennis released at the time in an attempt to promote the future series.
Like with the first part, the comic was released with a variety of different covers: Regular (3000 copies), Art Deco (750 copies), Horror (750 copies), Pure Art (250 copies), Red Crossed (400 copies) and VIP Signed (500 copies).
Richie wanted to live. Whatever he had to do to achieve that, he’d do it. He’d abandon his fiancé without a second’s thought. He’d run out on whoever he was with. He had no loyalties; he had no ties. He just wanted to live.
When the plane crash landed, he did just that. He thought only of himself. Only of how he could get as far from this madness as possible.
But that was always how Richie had been. Even when his father died, he never really gave it much thought. It never hit him. He just took it all in his stride and kept on with his own life.
Now he was with this group of irksome survivors and that little shit, Justin, had done his ankle in. The boy would slow them down. Richie knew it was a problem, so he did what he always does. He ran. Left the group without a second’s thought. Because he didn’t care about them.
He’d never cared about anything other than himself…
DLS Review:
Here we have the second half of the ‘Dead Or Alive’ mini-series from the Crossed comics. Where the first comic was largely about introducing the characters, this second comic reveals the true nature of Richie – who we’d assume was our lead protagonist. However, the selfish bastard is just the central figure. Neither protagonist nor anti-hero. Just the focal character of the two comics.
Once again, the story jumps between the point when the outbreak first hit, with Richie surviving the plane crash and then abandoning his fiancé, and then what we assume is a number of weeks later, following him and the group of survivors he’s now with.
However, it’s within this second comic where the true nature of Richie is fully revealed. His overriding inherent selfishness. His complete lack of empathy. His cowardly, self-centred behaviour which has followed him through his entire life. We’re talking to almost sociopathic proportions here.
So, when Justin (the young lad within the group that Richie detests) does his ankle in by stepping into a rabbit hole, Richie does exactly what comes naturally to him. He flees, leaving the rest of them behind. It’s a classic ‘Crossed’ situation, and one we’ve actually seen played out a few times over the various ‘Badlands’ comics.
Of course, Richie eventually gets his comeuppance. It’s again, all fairly textbook ‘Crossed’ stuff, with again, nothing here that we haven’t seen a number of times before. In fact, the whole ‘Dead Or Alive’ miniseries has frankly been unfortunately quite uninspired.
It kind of feels like a diluted down ‘Crossed’ story, which focuses on the dynamics behind the handful of characters, rather than the characters themselves. As such, although on the surface it may appear to be a character-driven tale, we never really get to see much of the characters, other than just surface level stuff.
Nevertheless, for a couple of comics which had the principal objective of introducing a bunch of characters and the setting for a proposed live-action series (which unfortunately never happened), it still kind of does the job. But the story itself isn’t the best, especially by ‘Crossed’ standards. Oh well.
The comic runs for a total of 32 pages.
© DLS Reviews
Other ‘Dead Or Alive’ instalments:
- ‘Crossed: Dead Or Alive – Issue One’ (2014)
- ‘Crossed: Dead Or Alive – Issue Two’ (2014)
