Broken Frontier

In recent memory, it seems no comic company has weathered as much adversity in so short a time as CrossGeneration Comics (or CrossGeneration Entertainment, CGE for short, as they’re known now.) From bold beginnings in 1998 to a pale shadow of themselves now in 2004, CGE has gone from rising star to falling stone in just twelve short months. The promise represented in a perfect shipping record, the delivery of comics in multiple formats such as trade paperbacks, monthly issues, Comics-On-The-Web, the Compendia series, and the Traveller series, has all given way to hard times and dark horizons. The downfall was first hinted at in the summer of 2003 with a few blown shipping dates blamed on “corrupted files” (it was later reported this was actually due to CrossGen’s payment delinquency to Quebecor, the printing house for their books.) CrossGen attempted to assuage fears by announcing they were awaiting a large cash infusion. Unfortunately that was not to be and soon there after events led to cutting their exclusive staff down to freelancers status (where they were still employees on salary, but now allowed to do freelance work), the abrupt cancellation of the majority of their initial series, and the cessation of trade paperback shipments The adversity CGE was weathering was about to turn into a full-blown typhoon.

From the onset, CGE made it known they were out to change the comics industry as a company that did many things differently compared to what had come before. Such revolutionary efforts as giving their creative staff exclusive, salaried contracts that included a steady paycheck every two weeks, medical and dental benefits, 401(k) (which never was in place), profit sharing, and even a moving expense package, to entice creators to move to Oldsmar, FL to work in a bullpen studio environment. The company's promises attracted many marquee comic industry veterans to the warm Florida headquarters. Allowing them to work on various projects in different genres, including science fiction, horror, fantasy, and a blend of these elements into something that really crossed genres. CrossGen seemed to truly offer the comic creators a bright new future, high profile creators like Greg Land, Chuck Dixon, Jim Cheung, Ron Marz, and many more were lured to this new future.

While they lured many creators away from assignments for more established companies such as Marvel and DC, CGE was also expanding their titles and various products at an impressive rate. They increased their output of monthly titles, expanded into the creator participation market with the new Code 6 imprint and the CGE Affiliate program. If this wasn’t enough CGE created Comics On The Web, Digital Comic Books, and even expanding into educational initiatives and movie properties.

At their height, it seemed CGE and their founder Mark Alessi could do no wrong. Alessi, President and CEO of CGE, even went so far as to make claims that they had enough capital to operate for five years without turning a profit as well as stating they’d be the number one publisher in comics within the first five years of their existence.

That was the shortest five years that any comic company has ever experienced and quite possibly the fastest any publisher had gone from unknown to famous to infamous. Those close to the company cite “ridiculous business decisions” as well as “company vision blinded by pride” as the achilles heel which brought about CGE’s apparent downfall.

It appears that CGE began their financial difficulties around the beginning of 2003, when the freelancers, who were contracted to do fill-in work for the company at the time, began wondering why their payments for services rendered never appeared. Robin Riggs, freelance inker at the time, posted to a Yahoo inker’s group about his non-payment issues, and from there, the floodgates opened. Due to Riggs going public, several other freelancers came forward with the same non-payment issues and expressed their concern about this very serious issue. To many industry pros and readers, CGE was likened to a “comic creator’s paradise”, a place where all of the various staffers appeared to enjoy the close camaraderie of other comic creating professionals and were able to feed off the energy contained by working so closely in the studio environment. This paradise was found by resurrecting the comics “bullpen” system that hasn’t existed in the comics industry for years. Unfortunately, it would seem there was trouble in paradise.

Shortly after these freelancers came forward, Bill Rosemann, CrossGen's Director of Marketing & Communications (now V.P. of Publishing – ed.), aimed comments at the freelancers referring to “unsatisfactory work and blown delivery dates” in what appeared to be an attempt to shift focus away from CGE’s apparent illegal use of contracted art. (For more info about this, click here.) A few days later, (apparently in a further attempt to shift focus away from any wrongdoing on the publisher’s part), Alessi made allegations of attempted blackmail in an interview at CBR. Meanwhile, artwork produced by these unpaid freelancers was being used to solicit issues for CGE, allegedly breaking contracts and even copyright laws in place at that time. After this incident, there has been online silence from Alessi and a restructuring took place at CG in September 2003, in which creative staff on salary took pay cuts and many were laid off. Even more resigned in the following months. Then in October 2003, CGE announced the cancellation of nine titles with more cancellations to shortly follow, with creators like Matt Smith let go from the company.

To date, there are still over 50 comic creators owed money by CGE (according to inside information the dollar amount owed has topped $300,000), many endured insult on top of fiscal injury after CGE released the art these very people created in their monthly books. Engaging in the contracting of artwork, reproduction of work for sale at a profit, while never paying those who created it and allegedly issuing threats of litigation against any who attempted to speak out against this behavior, makes the business of corporate comics as practiced by CrossGen look rather unethical and immoral.

Now, it appears that CGE has streamlined their operations and, while canceling many titles, seem to be experiencing moderate success with new titles like El Cazador, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Lady Death, and Abadazad. (For approximate sales of these new titles, click here.) However, questions have arisen in relation to current events regarding CGE’s continued success and those questions are: how much longer will they last? And how much longer can they get away with their alleged illegal activities?

***

This question is being asked because Broken Frontier has learned that Andy Smith, a former CGE-exclusive employee, is suing CGE for money owed him.

Earlier this week, Smith entered Small Claims court in Florida to approach CGE about payment due him. Originally, the court date was in February, but due to other legal matters for CGE, it had to be postponed. When the court date came, CGE’s attorney and Alessi’s fiancé, Jennifer Hernandez, attempted to have the case automatically dismissed because Smith made a small technical mistake of filing against Mark Alessi, DBA CrossGen Entertainment instead of CrossGen Comics, LLC. But the judge awarded an on the spot amendment to Smith.

After what seemed a small victory for Smith, and at the end of the day, the case is still ongoing and Smith will give updates whenever possible.

When asked about the possibility of other ex-CGE employees and freelancers suing CGE, Smith replied, “I don’t know. I’ve only talked to a handful of people that are owed money besides me, and obviously, there’s a lot more than that owed, but I don’t know who’s suing them and who’s not. I’m kind of being used as a Litmus test to see what happens. But I do know that some of the other people who are owed money are owed considerably more than me. And anything over $5,000 can't be tried in Small Claims court, at least in Florida .”

Smith added, “Trust me, I’ve said this and I mean it from the  bottom of my heart: I don’t want to see CGE go down, I don’t want to see the doors close. I just want to see Mark Alessi out of there because I believe he’s the one that ran the place into the ground. He loves to spew that CGE is in the shape it’s in because of other people, but, in my view, it’s not because of other people. He didn’t listen to anybody. The most he knew about comics when he opened the doors was what he knew as a fanboy that read comics. That’s it. That’s what he knew. If it was me, I’d have hired people that knew the business, which he did, but then I’d listen to them, but he didn’t listen to them. So the company is in the position that it’s in now, money-wise, because of him and nobody else.”

“All people who remained after the layoffs had their salaries cut. I was switched from penciling back to inking, even though I'd been promised a new book to pencil, and had $27,000 cut from my yearly salary. We were all told that absolutely everybody in the building took a pay cut. I think Mark referred to it as 'sharing the pain' in one meeting. But I've since learned for a fact that wasn’t true. At least one creator didn't take any pay cut, and some administrative people actually received raises."

Smith added, “We were always trying to get in the front of Diamond's Previews catalog, and Mark kept saying that Diamond was screwing us, not letting us in the front and blah, blah, blah. But I was told by people within the company that Diamond offered to move us up in Previews. If I understood it correctly, we would have had our own section right behind the Premier publishers, but that wasn't good enough for Mark and he said no. All of us wanted to be in the front, obviously, then we find out we had our chance but his ego wouldn’t let it happen.”

When asked about the cancellation of so many of CGE’s titles, Smith replied, “Luke Ross was a perfect replacement for Jeff Johnson, who quit Way Of The Rat. I mean, Luke's stuff looked great. But if Luke was getting paid by CrossGen, why would he need to go do six issues of Green Lantern? If he has a paying job, why take another job? Obviously, one job is not paying. I know the public reason was 'low sales', but my guess is that books like Way Of The Rat and Brath were canceled mostly because there aren’t the funds to hire an artist to draw them. Who’s going to draw a book without a guarantee of getting paid? Why would a book like Route 666 continue, when it was the lowest-selling book in the line? Do you think it has something to do with the artist, Karl Moline, still being one of those still on staff?”

When asked about the sales of CGE titles, Smith answered, “You can tell by looking at the sales charts that none of their sales are doing fine. From what I knew when I worked there, the comics didn’t make money. At the time, CGE didn’t make money off of publishing comics, period. That’s what cracks me up about them 'canceling because of low sales' because they would need to cancel the whole line. Maybe Sojourn makes money, but that's the only one. You have to think of overhead like rent, utilities, everything. The total of all of the sales of the comics combined would have to be greater than the costs to publish plus the overhead, and that isn’t happening. And I seriously doubt the other divisions of the company are making a profit because if they were, then the people who are owed money would be getting paid.”

Asked about his choice to quit, Smith added, “I had to quit. I was losing sleep; I just had a sick feeling in my stomach and couldn’t take it anymore. Plus, my salary had been cut by $27,000. I could provide for my family a lot better by going back to freelance.”

Looking at the bright side, Smith hasn’t been hurting, luckily. “I’ve done some stuff for Dungeon Magazine, some stuff for Fidelity Investment, my issue of Green Lantern comes out next week, now I’m working on Legion with Gail Simone and Dan Jurgens. I don’t have any regrets at all about quitting. Not at all. I quit October 22nd , 2003 and if you’d have asked me how long I’d give the place to last, I would have said until the end of the year and then the doors would shut. I am amazed that CGE is still around and I’m happy for my friends because I still have friends that work there.”

Smith has agreed to update Broken Frontier concerning his lawsuit when possible.

***

Broken Frontier has also spoken to another ex-CGE employee concerning payment from CGE, Drew Geraci. Asked about his payment status, Geraci replied, “I lucked out and actually got everything that was owed to me eventually. When we were going weeks and weeks without salaried pay, thankfully, DC was there for me, sending reprint checks that came from recent Birds of Prey and Nightwing trade paperbacks. That kept my house bills afloat. However, my final week and a half of salary was delayed by six weeks. DC again came to my rescue with that Batgirl fill-in (#48). When I did finally get that final CG check, I believe it was possibly an enticement to visit the office for purposes of discussing my returning as an employee with 1/ 3 pay cut and a heavier weekly workload. I sat with Art Director Rick Magyar, and he calmly listened to my grievances. I said I needed time to think about it, then a few days later, after I was sure the check cleared, I said, "no thank you". I may be wrong, but if they didn't need me to come back, I doubt I'd have ever seen that last check. Out of sight, out of mind, you know. DC and Marvel were waiting for me and I make the same now as if I'd returned to CG. With each passing day, CG becomes a smaller footnote in my long inking career. Having said that, I wish the individual creators well because they're more talented than they give themselves credit for.”

***

Other inside sources at CrossGen, who wished to remain nameless corroborated the comments made by Riggs, Smith, Geraci, and other freelancers then added other eyebrow raising allegations such as the circulation of a "do not hire" blacklist from CGE to all the other major publishers that included many of their disgruntled staffers. The list reportedly included threats of litigation to any who hired these staffers. This allegedly happened right after CGE publicly stated these people were free to seek work elsewhere. More disturbing is the allegations that those who are left at CGE remain solely to ensure they get what’s owed to them and avoid the litigious spite of the publishers owner, as most who have left are stone walled in every attempt to collect on payment owed for work performed for CGE and several have been threatened with legal action. This coupled with CGE’s incessant attempts to enforce the non-compete clauses in their contracts was icing on the cake to comic creators who had already endured more ‘bad faith business practices’ from CGE than anyone might expect in a lifetime in the comics industry.

Other allegedly mistreated freelancers speak of creating artwork that was published by CGE with the credit for the art being given to other artists in order to hide any financial obligation by the publisher to the freelancers.

Couple all these things with the recent reports of more of their top talent handing in their resignations and one can only ask… who will be the last?

- Chris Hunter