Mark of Charon #1
Review by Doc Ezra
Story:
Art:

Written by Tony Bedard
Pencils by Joe Bennett
Inks by Jonathan Glapion
Colors by Dave McCaig
Lettered by Troy Peteri

Published by Crossgen
Price: $2.95

My Verdict: Buy, borrow, or steal it. A must-read for those playing along at home.

The Crossgen Universe just keeps getting weirder with every new idea Alessi's maniacal crew hurl onto the stands. In Mark of Charon, the god-emperor familiar to readers of Negation retrieves the left-for-dead sigil-bearing healer Javi Cobain. He wants to employ Javi's unique abilities as a healer in his quest to create super-beings of his very own to counter the growing army of sigil-bearers from the "bright universe." But it only works on humans, so Charon's been forced to attempt a radical fusion of human DNA with that of the Negation natives, with truly gruesome and disastrous results.

But with Javi's healing capabilities, these abominations can be rescued from the brink of death and made whole again, creating a new force that Charon can employ to rule his bizarre negative universe with the iron hand for which he is legend. Despite Javi's protests, he finds himself unwittingly employed to exactly Charon's purposes (because the alternative is watching sentients die a gruesome and slow death right in front of him). But in this forced labor, Javi recognizes a glimmer of hope, an opening that some day might be exploited to Charon's detriment or even his destruction. Because of this long-range view of things, Javi goes along with the mad god's plans, helping him create a quartet of "ligis-bearers" to enforce Charon's will in the cosmos.

With this new limited run title, Crossgen has thrown the whole storyline of their sigil titles into confusion again. Just when readers think they might be getting a grip on what's going on in the heads of these maniacs, they come along and drop something like this (or the earlier Lawbringer standalone) and force people to rewrite their entire set of preconceived notions about the cosmology of the Crossgen universe and where all the various books fit into the big picture. Now, while it's great that they can keep everybody guessing, things really need to start coming together at some point, or I think the CGE crew will lose more readers to sheer frustration than disinterest.

The opening shot in this limited series certainly does everything it's supposed to do. It hooks readers right up front with the resurrection of Javi, a known character, by the guy who's ostensibly the greatest force of evil in the entire Crossgen universe...except maybe he's not. It will be interesting to see where Bedard takes us over the next four issues, and where he takes the Crossgen continuity in the same span. Here's hoping he answers more questions than he raises in that time.