Crossed Plus One Hundred: Mimic 01

Crossed Plus One Hundred: Mimic No. 1 regular cover, art by Gabriel Andrade

Below are annotations for Crossed Plus One Hundred: Mimic, No. 1 (48 pages: 22- and 8-page stories, 14 gallery pages, 4 house ad pages; cover date April 2018, released 16 May 2018)

Main story “War Is A Force That Gives Us A Meaning” (22 pages)
Writer: Christos Gage, Artist: Emiliano Urdinola

Backup American History X story “2060” (8 pages)
Writer: Pat Shand, Artist: Raulo Caceres, based upon a concept by: Alan Moore

>Go to CPOH annotations index
>Go to CPOH timeline
>Go to CPOH language/glossary
>Go to CPOH background, cast of characters

Note: some of this stuff is obvious. If there’s stuff I missed or got wrong, let me know in comments, or email linton.joe [at] gmail.com

WARNING: SPOILERS

General: This issue introduces Archivist Julie and infiltrator Fleshcook. It traces the events during and soon after the fall of the Casper, Wyoming, human settlement, as intelligent Crossed force surviving humans to kill other humans.
For what it’s worth, according to Bleeding Cool, this issue sold out and was not reprinted. It is available for purchase via the publisher’s online store.

Cover 

• The cover apparently depicts the c. 2108 siege of the human settlement in Casper, WY.

Opening Pages

• The regular cover issue includes a title page featuring the Gabriel Andrade cover for the CPOH No.1 CGC Numbered Edition variant.
• The story title “War Is A Force That Gives Us A Meaning” is apparently from the similarly-titled 2002 non-fiction book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.
• The second opening page features the Gabriel Andrade cover for the CPOH No.4 CGC Numbered Edition variant.

Page 1

panel 1

• The location is the human settlement in the former city of Casper, Wyoming. To “casper” is also CPOH-speak for scaring.
• The date appears to be just before the July 27, 2108, siege of Chooga events of CPOH6 – 100 years after the initial crossed outbreak, called “the Surprise.”
• The pre-siege backstory events are shown in muted green color, with the current timeline (starting on page 2) shown in full color.
• The mixed case writing is that of Archivist Julie, introduced on P4,p1 below.
• Throughout this issue, the language often references military terminology – starting with “compound”. These annotations point of most of these military references, though probably not all.

panel 2

• First appearance of Fleshcook / Thomas Preiss (left) who is analogous to infiltrator Jokemercy/Greer in the CPOH1-6 arc.
• “Armed forcing peoples” are people of the armed forces – the military.
• “Disease-mopping” is analogous to the events of CPOH1-6 where the infiltrator manipulates the human settlement to overextend itself in hunting down small groups of lesser Crossed in order to make it vulnerable to a siege by intelligent Crossed.

Pages 2-3

panel 1

• The date appears to be July 27, 2108.
• These pages depict an organized crossed siege – similar to the events of CPOH6.
• “Supply chain Eisenhower” is named after Dwight Eisenhower, a military leader who later became president of the U.S. The name is more military terminology, and apparently Casper’s larger-scale “disease-mopping” of Crossed similar to Chooga’s mopping in CPOH5-6. Similar to CPOH5-6, the unsuspected infiltrator (in Chooga: Greer, in Casper: Preiss) infects the humans who are hunting down Crossed.
• “In-tell”, more military terminology, refers to military intelligence.
• “Commander Chief” is short for the military term commander in chief.
• The crossed’s banner/flag depicts Beau Salt, the serial killer Crossed leader whose life story is told in CPOH5.

Page 4

panel 1

• First appearance of Archivist Julie, whose narration and work are analogous to archivist Future Taylor in earlier CPOH arcs.
• First appearance of Nina, holding butcher knife.
• The adults are holding knives to kill their children in order to prevent them from being infected. This calls back to early Crossed arcs (xxxx?) where adults kill children to prevent them from being infected.

Still from Terminator 2 – photo via Terminator Wikia

panel 3

• The “NO FATE” carved into Julie’s table is apparently a reference to a scene from the movie Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor carves this into a table. According to Terminator Wikia, “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves” is one of the most famous lines from the movies, appearing in several Terminator films.
• There is some sort of fitness poster in the background with a caption ending in “LIT.” Suggest??

panel 4

• “Few-bar” seems to be the 2108 version of the military slang “fubar” which means fucked-up beyond recognition.

Page 5

panel 1

• “Recon” is military terminology – short for reconnaissance.

panel 3

• “Double-time” is military terminology for a fast-paced march – essentially meaning “hurry up.”

Page 6 – no specific annotations

Page 7

panel 3

• More military terminology here including “doubletime” (see P5,p3 above) and “at-easing” here.

Page 8

panel 3

• “Roger” is more military slang. It is from the radio expression “Roger that” meaning “received and understood.”

panel 4

• “Frontline” (used here, on P9, and elsewhere) is another military term.

Page 9

panel 1

• “Standown” is another military term. More properly it would probably be “stand down.”

panel 2

• The green-gray tone indicates a flashback to earlier times.
• The man raping Julie echoes a theme, touched on various Crossed arcs, that uninfected humans do plenty of the same depraved violence that the Crossed do.

panel 3

• “Dirorder” is the 2108 version of “direct order” – another military term.

Page 10

panel 3

• “Too fast” is apparently Fleshcook lamenting that the victim was not tortured more.

Page 11

panel 1

• The green-gray tone indicates a flashback to earlier times.
• “In-listed” (enlisted) is another military term.

panel 2

• First appearance of Commander Chief Nathan.
• “The Brass” is more military slang, meaning higher-up officers.
• “Proper gander” is “propaganda.”
• Fleshcook’s family being eaten by lions is similar to Greer’s story of his family dying in a fire (see first half of CPOH2). Wild lions are depicted on a couple of early CPOH covers (CPOH Taste Test Crossed Flavor and CPOH2 American History X [2076])

panel 3

• “Hoo-ah” (or just Hooah) is a military battle cry.
• “Basics” is military basic training.

panel 4

• “Brass ring” again references military brass – and also the expression ‘grabbing for the brass ring‘ to achieve something big.

panel 5

Page 12

panels 1-5

• These form a fixed-camera sequence.
• “Camo” is more military slang, short for “camouflage.”

Opening panel of Crossed Badlands No.32 – art by Christian Zanier

• “Smart infected. Mopped a Armed Forcings settle called Cheyenne Mountain, back Surprise times” refer to Christos Gage’s Crossed arc “Quisling” featuring super-Crossed “Smokey” in Crossed Badlands No. 29-32 (collected in Crossed TPB volume 7.) In issues 31-32 the smart Crossed “Smokey” takes over the Cheyenne Mountain Complex military command center located inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.
  In all three of his Crossed Badlands arcs (“Quisling” in No. 29-32, Untitled [Smokeyville] in No. 93-96, and Untitled [Key West] in No. 97-100), Christos Gage pairs the intelligent Crossed “Smokey” with a compliant human partner – somewhat similar to Mimic’s pairing of Fleshcook and Julie.

panel 2

• “Code redded” references the military slang “code red” meaning hazing.
• “That infected was smarter” refers to Smokey (or possibly his offspring) – see panel above.
• “Co-hones” is the 2108 version of “cojones” which is Spanish for balls/testicles.
• “Honor Thomas” follows the naming convention from initial CPOH stories where character names include “Hope”, “Future”, and “Forward.”

panel 5

• “SOP” is military slang for standard operating procedure.

Page 13

panel 1

• The green-gray tone indicates a flashback to earlier times.

panels 5-6

• These form a fixed-camera sequence.

panel 6

• This panel precedes the rape depicted on P9,p2.

Page 14

panel 1

• “CC” is a military term short for “commander” or “class commander.”
• “Defcon” is military terminology, short for “defense readiness condition.”
• “Pee-oh double-use” is “POWs” military term for prisoners of war.

Page 15

panel 1

• Beauregard Salt is the intelligent Crossed villian that lays the groundwork to organize Crossed in earlier arcs of CPOH. See CPOH5 for Salt’s life story.

panel 3

• “New Castle” is the city of Newcastle, WY.
• “Rap City” is apparently Rapid City in South Dakota.

Page 16

panel 3

• “Intelled” is from the military term “intel” short for intelligence.
• Salt is eating eyeballs and fingers. He was shown to be a cannibal in CPOH5 P13,p1.

panel 5

• Salt’s “twelve disciples” (named after the seven dwarfs) were shown in CPOH5.
• The “three” who remain are apparently: Bashful (appears in CPOH5-6, dies in CPOH12), Sneezy (appears at the end of CPOH18) and probably Sleepy (“Sleepy’s expedition” is mentioned in CPOH14 P12,p2 but circa 2108 Sleepy has yet to appear.)
• Salt disciple Happy was last mentioned by Greer in CPOH18.

Page 17

Death of the Reprobate painting by Hieronymous Bosch – via Wikipedia

panels 1-2

• These apparently both depict Happy with Beau Salt.

panel 4

• The “BOSCH” book is about the artist Hieronymous Bosch, whose paintings sometimes depicted hellish scenes that are perhaps somewhat similar to scenes from Crossed. Not sure exactly what specific book this might be, though the painting shown on the cover is called Death of the Reprobate.

Page 18

panel 1

• “The Punic Wars” were fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 BC to 146 BC.
• “Gettysburg” was, of course, the most important battle of the American Civil War.

panel 2

• “This is Goya” is a book about the artist Francisco Goya, whose paintings and prints often depicted the horrors of war. (See also nitpicks page.)
• On the shelf is the book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning which is the source of this issue’s title.

panel 4

• Intelligent Crossed speak English that is closer to 2008 language – see CPOH5 P8,p5 for example.
• Unclear what Fleshcook is asking Julie to “return”?? (to shelve the book?)

Pages 19-22 – no specific annotations

In-Between Pages (What’s the word for these??)

• For the regular cover issue, the title page for American History X “Year 2060” shows Gabriel Andrade’s Crossed Culture variant cover for CPOH1.
• The following 2-page spread is Gabriel Andrade’s American History X wrap cover for CPOH1, which was dated 2060. Apparently this cover is the Alan Moore “concept” that put Moore’s name in the credits. This 2060 story is a backstory written for that cover.
• The next page is Raulo Caceres American History X variant cover for CPOHM1.

Backstory Page 1

panel 1

• The date is the year 2060. (Annotators are so smart to tell you stuff like this, right?)
• The location is unclear. (The only site mentioned in the story is North Carolina on P5,p4.)
• First appearance of Remy Crowell, apparently also an archivist (or at least a diarist.)
• “Infected are dying out” matches the timeline Alan Moore sketched out (mostly in the opening of CPOH4) where the Crossed population drops from 5 million to 1 million from 2050 to 2070.

Pages 2-3

panel 3

• “Mama’s walls” is not clear – they are the walls of the fort… but why “mama” – could be the name of the city? Suggest???

Page 4 – no specific annotations

Page 5

panel 2

• “C-Day” here refers to the day of the Crossed outbreak in 2008. In real life, it refers to an annual day when cosplayers dress up as Crossed.

Page 6

panels 2,4

• “Flag” – suggest?

Pages 7-8 – no specific annotations

End Pages

• The regular cover edition has a gallery featuring: CPOH5 regular cover, then several later CPOH variant covers.

THE END

>Go to Crossed Plus One Hundred: Mimic No.2 annotations
>Go to Crossed Plus One Hundred annotations index