This is not my standard review as a) I didn't finish reading the material and b) it's based more on things the author said than the work itself.
I am a big Garth Ennis fan; he's famous for writing ultra-violent, pushing-the-envelope, dark humor stories like Preacher (about an ex-Preacher and his friends on a journey to find and kill God. Yes, THAT God) and The Boys (starring a superhero assassination squad). I've enjoyed everything of his I've read, but when I heard he was taking on a torture porn story called Crossed, about a virus that turns people evil so they glory in torture and carnage, I was torn.
I'm a horror fan, but I hate torture porn. (Standard disclaimer: I'm not saying anything against it or people who like it, I'm just speaking for myself.) After reading a few articles online with glowing reviews and interviews with Ennis himself, I grew interested enough to check it out.
I regretted it. I got to a scene where the Crossed (those people turned evil by the virus, hence the title) sodomize a husband and wife while literally tearing their daughter to pieces in front of them, and that was it for me. It's Ennis's usual good writing: great dialogue, exciting action. The torture was just too much for me. I recommend Crossed to people with really strong stomachs, because Ennis ain't kidding when he says it's "the most f***** up thing" he's ever written, and this is a guy who wrote about someone getting his leg cut off and eaten by cannibals.
However, rather than the comic itself, I've been thinking about a comment Ennis made in an interview where he mentioned that what the Crossed do to their victims is realistic:
The world's a pretty grim place at the moment, and little is being done to alleviate matters. We're able to tolerate war, genocide, and famine; we're happy to ignore devastation by earthquake, hurricane and tsunami. Body counts mean nothing. Our governments are full of scum who plainly don't care about the welfare of their people and are happy to let them founder....I went to see ‘Iron Man’ recently, which attempts to incorporate real world problems into a superhero story, and to me that simply rendered the guy-with-powers fantasy even more meaningless than usual. There is no one like this, nor will there ever be. The world cannot be knocked into the kind of shape we want. It actually helped crystallize some of the thoughts I've had about Crossed: there are no heroes, no one's coming to save you, you're on your own. Now: survive.
I thought that quote was brilliant; it's the main reason I picked Crossed up. I still think it's brilliant. Moments of clarity and a no-nonsense feeling like that is a lot of what I like about Ennis's writing.
And yet, the bit about Iron Man made me pause. Of course there's no Iron Man and no superheroes--but there are no zombies, either. Zombies, at their most intelligently written, can represent the human race at its most foul. In the same vein, superheroes were created, not to be realistic, but to show off the best urges and parts of the human condition: namely selflessness, bravery, and compassion.
(They're not so much written this way anymore, since modern-day writers and readers seem more interested in villainous, murderous super-types; I remember reading one message board where a reader scoffed that morals were "boring". Personally, I've no interest in superheroes of that type, though.)
Re-reading Ennis's quote, I have to disagree with him that a fantasy about the worst in people is more legitimate or less ridiculous than one about the best in us. They're both fantasies highlighting one part of who we are. Personally, as a writer, I'd like to write about both, and reading Crossed and this Ennis interview (linked below) has helped me realize that.
Mind you, Ennis is still brilliant, and I'm not speaking against him for his opinions, just saying where I disagree and why. As a writer, he's got to write what he feels, and he's a good writer because he does just that. Hopefully, realizing what I want to write means I can do the same.
NOTES:
Here's the interview where all the quotes come from, plus information on Crossed:
www.comicbookresources.com/