Mystic Omnibus

Date Completed: 7 June, 2025

Grade: A

I remember when I first saw an ad for the CrossGen Universe comics. It was in an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table, and it was a comic strip of the characters from KODT discussing the premise of the sigil and shared universe (known as the Sigilverse). I thought it sounded stupid. One of the things I loved about Marvel was its shared universe, but it felt like that was something which grew organically into being; but this CrossGen thing felt forced. At the time I was working at a Barnes and Noble, and so I began seeing some of the trade paperbacks come out, and I was impressed with the artwork and the colors. I eventually decided to give the book Sojourn a chance because I had read good things about it, and Greg Land seemed to be the hottest penciler in the industry (if the accusations of his simply tracing were widely made at this point, I was unaware). Boy was I impressed. So, I decided to try another CrossGen book. I don't remember what that other book was, but I had started picking up several CrossGen titles, including Mystic for issues 20-28 (I stopped at 28 because the following month I moved to England for a year's study abroad, and buying comics in England was not quite as easy as in the States).

I was incredibly disappointed when CrossGen went under, and I long thought about collecting all of the titles from the publisher just to have them: even though they are incomplete stories as a result of CrossGen's massive and sudden implosion. I was very pleased when Marvel announced their intention to print the first CrossGen Omnibus, Sigil, in 2023 (CrossGen was bought by Disney before Disney bought Marvel, so Disney has essentially just moved CrossGen to being an imprint of Marvel). While I dislike the Omnibus format (too big, a pain to read) I was not convinced these titles would be turned into Epics Collections if there weren't enough people to buy them, so I grabbed a copy of Sigil (which I read last summer), and then Mystic which I was just able to finish.

What I loved about CrossGen (and what can be seen in the Mystic volume) is the innovation they had with stories, art, and color. The CrossGen books were not just super hero comics: they played in all types of different genres, which was fresh and new in the early 2000s. The art was intentionally big and cinematic, and while this has been a complaint of mine about modern comics (that there is not enough story per issue) it just somehow worked for CrossGen. There were great examples of this in the Mystic series, such as issue 11 where nearly every page is split into 16 rectangular panels, but even within those panels they merge and share imagery (and the lettering works with the panels to be easy to follow whether the reader looked at each individual panel or the wider image). I began noticing in some of the later issues that the opening page played with the imagery to create the title 'Mystic' in subtle ways, and I loved how the white space between panels was treated as the bars of a jail cell in issue 38. As for the color, many of the CrossGen books are incredibly rich and bold, and Mystic is no exception.

For the story itself, it is part of this shared universe where these powerful beings provide a mystic 'Sigil' on one person to give them incredible powers. The unique twist to Mystic is that this is already an extraordinary world filled with magic, and the one person (Giselle Villard) who wants nothing to do with magic is given this power to become the most powerful sorceress on the planet. In the process, she disrupts the politics of her world, and also becomes embroiled in the power plays of these other powerful beings called "the First" (and this is admittedly a large blind spot for me regarding CrossGen: the First are important for the overarching universe, but I never read the comic devoted to them, and I know very little about them). Ron Marz began the series, and I always loved how he was able to create large and epic stories, which this certainly has. There was a clear change in tone when Marz left after issue 17 and Tony Bedard took over. At first I wasn't too keen on the noir detective tone the book took (even though I like that genre, I just didn't think it was right for this book), but that story did set up a new direction for having Giselle explore the other guilds of magic and learning from them (which in turn lets the reader learn more about this fantastical world). I enjoyed this new direction, and the stories continued to improve from here, even though Bedard started to get a little silly and slapstick-y towards the end. I wonder of that's because he knew it was going to be the end of the company and decided to have some fun. I don't know. So, it was sad to see the story end without a full resolution, but I'm glad Marvel released this Omnibus, and I would be even more pleased if we could get more CrossGen titles (and in Epic format instead!).