I'll Stick With The Original, Thanks
I must start by saying that this review will deal with adult themes, so if you're easily offended then steer clear of this review, and Crossed in general!
Secondly, I know this isn't exactly the popular opinion, but I really don't rate Crossed Family Values at all.
Let me explain: I'm no prude. Guts and gore do not bother me. I don't think a piece of art has ever offended me. Ever. I mean, get a life, right? They're drawings. That said, CFV left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
The first volume, Crossed, was excellent. Yes, the depictions of extreme rape and violence were horrible, but they were supposed to be. It was supposed to creep you out. What saved the title from being just another example of extremity for its own sake was the writing quality. You could feel the tension on every page. The characters were real, the danger palpable. While it pushed the envelope, gratuity was not the only trick up its sleeve, and what resulted was a groundbreaking comic which breathed new life into the zombie/apocalypse genre, while challenging the boundaries of what is acceptable in comics.
I'll be blunt: extremity for its own sake is just boring. It employs the attention seeking tactics of an impatient hyperactive child. And that was how I felt after reading CFV. After reading Crossed, I felt like I'd been on a journey - after Crossed:Family Values, I felt more like I'd been to a gross out contest.
With no properly developed characters other than the most over used stereotypes imaginable (inbred rednecks? THAT hasn't been done before!), with the focus seeming to be solely on the ultra-violence and rape with no substance to back it up, I felt the whole thing was cheapened. Just another voyeuristic exercise, a game of one-upmanship to see who can fit the most blood and sexual assault onto one page.
I'm all for testing the limits, but not like this.
