In Image Comics' Spotlight Panel at Comic-Con@Home 2020, Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe and John J. Hill team behind the upcoming series Crossover offered some new insights and details about the highly-anticipated upcoming series. They explained the basic premise behind the book, gave some details about the core cast, explained the importance of keeping the focus on the more relatable characters, and constantly emphasized the ambitiousness of Crossover.
Throughout the panel, the team behind Crossover -- endearingly referred to as 'the Crossover gang' by series writer Donny Cates -- teased at the core premise behind the book without spoiling crucial events. "Crossover started life as an anti-event event series," Cates explained. As a writer who has significant experience with sprawling, publisher-wide events such like Absolute Carnage or the upcoming King in Black, Cates said Crossover was about "If one of those mega-event, huge, linewide, cross-company crossovers became so huge and so epic that a portal opened up in the sky, and it collapsed into our actual world." This forms the basic premise of Crossover, as was seen in the teaser images shown during the panel and later shared by Image. The Event, as people in-universe call it, brought comic fiction to life in a majestic, terrifying way.
In addition to discussing how "The Event" will bring comics fiction to life in a majestic, terrifying way, Cates also discussed the main character of Crossover, a comics retailer named Ellie. Ellie was evacuated from her home by The Event, and now is seeking a way back to her native Colorado alongside a band of misfit characters. This brings into focus the dual nature of Crossover: while The Event might be the inciting incident for the events of the book, the focus of Crossover is how Ellie and the rest of the world deal with what has happened.
While Cates calls Crossover "the biggest, craziest, loudest thing I've ever done, which is saying something', he adds that it is "about one girl and her friends trying to find home, trying to find that they belong in a world where nothing makes sense anymore."
The creative team was not shy about describing the ambitions of the series. While they weren't able to shed too much light on details, the team repeatedly said that they were doing things in Crossover that had never been done before in comics. Cates underscored the sixth issue of the series in particular as containing truly monumental events and technical mastery from the team.
Geoff Shaw said, "Everything ties together in this." While the team does not drop any details, it would seem that Crossover will not be filled with entirely new characters. Cates mentions that readers will "encounter new and familiar faces," and panel host Megan Hutchison also said that the book was called Crossover for a reason.
Whether this means that Crossover will include characters from the creative team's previous works like God Country or Redneck, or characters from other Image series remains to be seen. Whichever characters we meet in Crossover, Cates assures readers that, if nothing else, it will be a wild ride. He states that Crossover is a "book that makes a lot of promises, and I hope that you will trust us enough to come back each month to see if we can actually pull this shit off."
Written by Donny Cates, with art by Geoff Shaw, colors by Dee Cunniffe, and letters by John J. Hill, Crossover will be debut in November 2020, published by Image Comics.