CrossGen

Cross Generation Entertainment, or CrossGen, was an ambitious American comic book publisher founded in 1998 by Mark Alessi. Before CrossGen folded in 2004 it managed to become one of the strongest independent (that is, not DC Comics or Marvel Comics) contenders in the comics industry.

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In 1998 the comic book industry was at one of its lowest points. The "generation gap", the trend where the age of existing fans increased while the number of new fans decreased, became painfully evident. The more recent comic book publishers were going bankrupt, and sales figures were plummeting.

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Mark Alessi and his compatriots felt that comic book industry had major problems that needed to be corrected. Most comic books were written by adult white males for adult white males. This resulted in comics that tended to reduce women to sex objects and minorities to cardboard stereotypes. Superhero comics dominated the shelves. Most comic books were set in tightly integrated shared realities with several decades worth of backstory. Often a reader had to pick up several comic book series in order to understand the full story.

American: :This page disambiguates the many uses of American. For an article about those various uses, please see Use of the word American....

Comic book: A comic book is a magazine or book containing the sequential art in the form of a narrative. Comic books are often called comics for short. Although the term implies otherwise, the subject matter in comic books is not necessarily humorous, and in fact its dramatic seriousness varies widely. The term...

Publisher: A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing....