My interview with writer Garth Ennis, who I’ve never had the good fortune of meeting in person, hit ComicMix today. I’ve always been impressed with his work on Punisher and The Boys, and I’m embarassed ot say I only recently sat down and read through one of his most celebrated series, Preacher. His stuff is brutal and raw and feels like great action movies are supposed to feel – not the one-fight-follows-another with flashy effects kind, but the kind that approach the story with a more visceral tone. His upcoming project that forms the basis of our interview, Crossed, seems to continue on in that tradition.

As always, I’ve posted an excerpt from the interview here, with a link to the full transcript at the end of the post.

No stranger to pushing the boundaries of storytelling in the comics world, Garth Ennis has routinely shocked and awed readers of such titles as Preacher, The Boys, Punisher and recently, The Chronicles of Wormwood. In early August, Ennis looks to repeat that success with Crossed, a story that promises to be a "horrifically visceral exploration of the pure evil that humans are truly capable of indulging." The series will be published by Avatar Press -- also no stranger to testing the limits of mature-themed projects -- with art provided by Ennis' former collaborator on Wormwood, Jacen Burrows.

According to the solicit text for the series:

Imagine, for a moment, the worst crimes against humanity. Picture the cruelest affronts to decency. Conjure your darkest nightmares... and then realize it could all be so much worse. When civilization crumbles in one terrifying moment; when people are gleefully breaking into unthinkable acts of violence all around you; when everyone you love has died screaming in agony: What do you do? There is no help. There is no hope. There is no escape. There are only the Crossed. Certain to be the most depraved and corrupt book of the year, this one is not for the faint of heart!

With the prologue issue of Crossed (#0) hitting shelves immediately after this year's San Diego Comic-Con International, I posed a few questions to Ennis about the origins of the series, his thoughts on pushing the boundaries in today's comics scene and what really shocks him these days.

COMICMIX: What sparked the idea for Crossed, Garth?

GARTH ENNIS: I had a dream that I thought was going to be about zombies attacking a house full of victims, but it turned out they weren't zombies at all. They were simply people, grinning with psychotic glee at the thought of what they were going to do to the occupants of the house -- which wasn't going to be anything nice. Then I woke up.

Thanks again, subconscious self.

CMIX: Avatar has been teasing this project as something that pushes the limits of anything they've published before. So what do we have to look forward to -- or possibly close our eyes and avoid?

GE: There's quite a nasty bit at the end of part three. Not spectacularly violent, not bloody at all. But a bad moment.

The trouble with talking about pushing limits and extreme material is that it's completely subjective; what freaks one person out will barely get a shrug from another. But this is as far as I've ever gone.

CMIX: What are you enjoying the most about scripting this story?

GE: I've enjoyed the pacing of it. Issue #0 is a wild, balls-to-the- wall adrenaline rush where everything crazy happens at once. Issue one takes you ahead to about a year after the initial "Crossed" outbreak, when things are quieter -- because there aren't really that many people left for bad things to happen to. So there's a lot more character stuff and dialogue scenes, which I like writing, combined with an occasional moment of sudden horror to hopefully bring you up short.

Each issue also has a flashback sequence, wherein we discover how our heroes got from the events of the zero issue to their current situation.

Head over to ComicMix for the full Garth Ennis interview on Crossed.