Crossed stopped being a single series almost immediately after it launched, and the franchise has grown into one of the largest extended universes Avatar Press publishes.
Our existing guide to Crossed #1 covers identification and printings for that original launch issue specifically, which is useful once you already know where that issue sits in the wider timeline.
What a lot of new readers actually need first is the bigger picture: which spin-offs exist, how they connect, and what order to actually read them in.
This guide maps the full Crossed universe, from the original 2008 series through its biggest spin-offs, as a practical reading-order checklist.
The original Crossed series, written by Garth Ennis with art by Jacen Burrows, ran for ten issues beginning in 2008 and established the core premise: a plague that strips away the restraint keeping ordinary people from acting on their worst impulses.
Everything else in the franchise builds outward from this first series, making it the correct and really only sensible starting point for a new reader regardless of which spin-off interests you most.
Crossed: Family Values, from writer David Lapham and artist Javier Barreno, ran seven issues starting in 2010 and shifted focus to a different group of survivors navigating the same outbreak.
Family Values is best read directly after the original series, since it is set within the same early-outbreak timeframe rather than jumping forward to a later point in the Crossed timeline.
Psychopath followed in 2011, again from David Lapham, this time paired with artist Raulo Caceres for another seven-issue run exploring the psychological side of the outbreak's survivors.
Like Family Values, Psychopath sits in the same general early timeframe as the original series rather than advancing the overall Crossed timeline significantly further.
Crossed: Wish You Were Here moved the franchise into a webcomic format, running 22 issues from 2012 through 2014 with writer Si Spurrier and artists Javier Barreno and Fernando Melek.
This is the longest single spin-off on this list before Badlands, and it marks the point where the franchise started experimenting with serialized webcomic delivery rather than sticking purely to print single issues.
Crossed: Badlands launched in February 2012 and ran until July 2016, reaching 100 issues under rotating creative teams across its run, making it the single largest entry in the entire franchise by issue count.
Badlands functions as an anthology rather than one continuous narrative, with different arcs following different casts of survivors, which makes it approachable in smaller chunks rather than requiring a full cover-to-cover read in sequence.
Crossed: Dead or Alive, a 12-issue webcomic from Garth Ennis and artist Daniel Gete, began syndication in November 2014 and offers a more self-contained alternate entry point into the wider franchise.
Readers who want a shorter, Ennis-written Crossed story without committing to the full Badlands anthology can reasonably start here instead, since it does not require having read every prior spin-off first.
Crossed +100, a distinct spin-off written by Alan Moore and set a century after the original outbreak, is a significant enough entry in its own right that it gets its own dedicated spotlight rather than being folded into this reading order.
If the idea of a Crossed story set generations after the main timeline interests you, our dedicated Crossed +100 spotlight covers its premise and creative team in full.
With six or more distinct spin-offs across more than a decade of releases, a Crossed collection spans a lot of different printing eras and paper stocks.
Backing every single issue with a current-age comic backer board keeps the whole collection consistent regardless of which spin-off or publication year a given issue came from.
Readers who want the franchise's core experience without committing to every spin-off should prioritize Family Values right after the original series, since it stays closest to the premise that made Crossed notable in the first place.
Badlands is worth saving for later specifically because its anthology structure rewards picking individual arcs rather than needing to read the full hundred-issue run straight through.
The original 2008 ten-issue Crossed series by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows.
No, it is an anthology with rotating creative teams across its 100-issue run.
No, it works as a reasonable alternate entry point on its own.
It is a distinct spin-off covered separately due to its unique century-later setting.
Six spin-offs and well over a decade of single issues means a storage plan matters from the start; begin with current-age comic bags for every issue across the franchise.
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