In-Universe, during the third +100 volume Future is left wondering whether her new assistant Ufoq's desire to follow Bailey's army and chronicle the fighting is out of a genuine desire to witness and record history or just because he wants an excuse to sleep with Bailey's chief lieutenant, with the comic itself providing support for both.
In Mimic there's some slight ambiguity about whether Nathan's neighboring factions such as New Castle are as bad as he is or just allies of convenience in going after a Crossed faction threatening them all. Notably, Julie and the other prisoners/collaborators initially seem reluctant at the idea of being deployed against those neighbors or seeing the Crossed defeat them.
Barry, The Immune who had an unfortunate case of We Hardly Knew Ye. What was the secret behind him not turning? Was it some lucky genetic condition making him physically immune? Was he mentally able to resist it (like Patient Zero, but even more so)? Or was Jasper even telling the truth about Barry not turning after getting splashed with Crossed bodily fluids?
The Gamekeeper mocking Shaky's past as a writer could give a possible hint that the Gamekeeper could have at least been into writing stories himself, something he clearly despises by the time Shaky's flashback takes place.
The ending of The Folly mini-series is fairly sour, but the implication that Esther immediately switched to Isaac after killing off his infected bullies may not be true. Most of all because Esther slurred all of the words she had spoken, and she certainly might not have been able to speak out such a coherent threat. Considering the story is set not very long after the C-Day, it can be interpreted that Isaac had unknowingly run into another roving bands of the Crossed, most of which would still be operating all around.
Arc Fatigue: Gavin Land's arc is considerably longer than all other story arcs of Badlands (starting with issue 62 and ending with issue 70), mostly due to being padded out with flashbacks and dialogue. Even Gavin's key goal of getting revenge at Wentz is briefly put on hold when he has to team up with him to reach the San Diego evacuation site.
The Downer Ending of American Quitters comes with little foreshadowing and almost no hints at all. At first, it baits the reader into believing it would be a Bittersweet Ending where Errol and Frank both die and Elena escapes on her own... only for the very last page to show that the island refugees were all infected and quickly tore the pregnant woman to shreds, apparently because "no lesson was learned" and also because almost every Crossed story has to end in a depressing manner.
From the last issue of Badlands, we have Smokey surviving his wives' betrayal. We get to see several Crossed gunning him down, which leads to Smokey falling in a river. Even ignoring the bleeding that would be caused from multiple gunshot wounds, at least one bullet hits him directly in the head, which ought to have at least caused concussion, if not outright killed him. That being said, Smokey, Elite Zombie or not, could have still have bled to death afterwards.
Smokey, big time. Many people like him for being an unusually intelligent and dangerous villain who goes through a considerable Character Development, but there are also those who think he gets too much focus and sympathy, especially during the last arcs of Badlands.
Shaky from Wish You Were Here is one of the most controversial protagonists in the entire franchise. While some people hate him because of his manipulations which lead to Cava constantly being in jeopardy (and eventually rendered uninhabitable after the final Crossed attack) and other characters dying, others like him exactly because of his characterization an an intuitive and manipulative guy who nonetheless screws a lot up and tends to be painfully aware of it.
Bailey is respected by some fans for the successes he has against the Crossed at a time when humanity was desperately in need of a win, and hated by some for his borderline authoritarian government and how he sacrificed a sympathetic supporting character as part of his first trap against the Crossed. His Alternate Character Interpretation doesn't help.
Bile Fascination: A driving force of the appeal of the series, although quite a few people are still turned away from it.
Which author wrote the best Crossed arcs? While the stories written by Garth Ennis himself are often seen as superior to many others that followed, there is still a noticeable division between others. Christos Gage's arcs are liked for introducing Smokey the Elite Zombie, Simon Spurrier is well-known among the fans for Wish You Were Here and +100, both of which allowed the series to Grow the Beard , while David Lapham introduces the characters of Amanda and Harold Lorre, both of which are complex — but they also have a fair share of detractors.
Horsecock getting his throat ripped out by Thomas in the final issue of Volume One.
Joseph Pratt being attacked and infected by Joyce before getting killed off in Family Values.
Jasper having his tendons cut and left on a lone piece of land with a claymore to attract Aoileann's horde in Wish You Were Here.
Gideon Welles getting dismembered and infected by his Crossed clients and workers for all the trouble he put them through.
El-Sayeed taking advantage of Melissa's interference and turning the tables on Frank and Captain Barnes by killing the former and wounding the latter, before committing suicide in order to avoid an incoming death from Crossed.
The Gamekeeper getting shot in the mouth with a flare gun in Wish You Were Here.
Leigha taking down a comic fan gang (who had been keeping her captive since the C-Day) with the help of Butch and Patrick.
Bashful getting gunned down by Future in the second volume of +100.
Jokemercy getting mortally wounded by Mustaqba in the final issue of +100.
After arc after arc of despicable, treacherous characters like Harold Lorre committing the most vile deeds imaginable and getting away with it, the ending to Dead or Alive is incredibly satisfying. The Villain Protagonist, Richie, is an incompetent sociopath who sees his own group as expendable and plans to betray and abandon them at the first opportunity. When one of the group sprains his ankle, Richie urges that they just leave him for the Crossed that are apparently hunting them and use the time to get away, but the group refuse to leave him behind, spurring Richie into action. He first knocks out Carl during a two-man scouting mission and abandons him in the hope the Crossed will get him, then just runs off in a random direction. His badly thought out and ill timed plan goes awry when he runs off a cliff and breaks his leg, and his rifle. His former group finds him however, but having deduced what he just tried to do they proceed to loot and abandon him instead, to his total shock. The Crossed just barely missed Carl and moved on; apparently they weren't hunting the group at all and them using the same trail was purely coincidental, so Richie's plan was not just evil, it was totally pointless. Worse, when he broke his leg, he let out a great scream in pain, meaning the Crossed will be coming back for him. Richie attempts to spite his former group, saying they are no better then he isfor doing what he just tried to do to them, only for them to toss him a pistolas a last grace, which he wastes killing a few Crossed that find him but leaves him with no bullets left when more get their hands on him. It's almost like Garth Ennis read Psychopath, Wish You Were Here and all the worst Badlands arcs and wrote this just to show how people like Harold Lorre and the Gamekeeper would really fare.
Complete Monster: +100 & Mimic: Beauregard Leander Salt is the progenitor of the Salt Clan, who's responsible for all the misery the heroes currently face, despite being dead over a century. Once known as "The Phonebook Killer", Salt was so sadistically sociopathic that he was unaffected by the Crossed Virus. Realizing the self-destructing nature of the Crossed and wishing to keep his heaven of violence and chaos going indefinitely, Salt orchestrated a ploy to prevent the extinction of the Crossed and draw out the suffering of humanity for as long as possible. Salt would spread his messages and philosophy across the country, making him a prophet figure towards the other Crossed, while experimenting on his numerous members, weeding out hostile ones as he tortures and teaches The Crossed to become intelligent and able to bide their time. Creating The Salt Clan, promoting several of his most obedient Crossed to leadership roles across the country, Salt orders all of them to build their strength in numbers and bide their time and, within the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak, commit their horrid acts, before going back to wait more decades to repeat the cycle. Even elderly and bedridden, Salt is proud over his actions recreating The Crossed and dies content the world will forever be a hellish nightmare. Even within the dark setting of Crossed, Salt is easily the worst of them all.
Jackson in the "Wish You Were Here" webcomic arc provides a straight example. He's about as nuts as they come (even if he isfaking some of it) and accepts sheep sex as payment for his services. Because of this, he's one of the few able to survive alone and even thrive in the post-apocalyptic hellscape of Crossed.
Creator's Pet: Each of the main Badlands writers seems to have one.
Christos Gage shoves Smokey into Cody’s bunker arc in ways that screw with the timeline (given that the time periods he had both Oliver and Cody as his prisoners apparently overlap even though the characters don't) and makes it a rehash of Quisling. In addition to this, Smokey gets painted more sympathetically than he has a right to be in the final issues and even survives his family's betrayal, despite it serving no real narrative purpose, and cheated the audience out of either a Karmic Death or Alas, Poor Villain moment, depending on how sympathetic they find Smokey.
Amanda is used as a protagonist in three separate David Lapham arcs that keep altering her character in somewhat disconcerting ways, with her arc in the later two feeling somewhat repetitive.
Though the comic is undeniably visceral and horrifying, the entire concept of Horsecock is pretty funny in a dark sort of way.
The scene where the Crossed sing "We Could Have Been Anything" from Bugsy Malone.
The possible fate of the British Royal Family as told by a heavily scarred man claiming to be Prince Harry. When the pandemic started, he and Prince Charles were bundled into a helicopter by their bodyguards and flown to Balmoral for safety... only for the crossed to swarm the helicopter the moment it landed. The last thing "Harry" claimed to see before he ran for it, was an infected Queen Elizabeth II chewing Prince Charles's bollocks off while still alive.
Delusion Conclusion: The whole arc of Breakdown has so much Mind Screw that some consider it to be all a hallucination Amanda has, meaning that there might be a possibility that she didn't kill Vic and his group after all.
Designated Villain: Edmund in the "Yellow Belly" arc of Badlands. While he has his villainous moments (namely defiling Nicole's corpse and his cowardice causing the deaths of Sweeny and Nicole), his cowardice does keep him alive, and the bravery of his peers comes across as bravado bordering on stupidity.
Draco in Leather Pants: Smokey, whose continued survival despite his excess cruelty, vague origins, threat to humanity, and his story’s repetitiveness doesn’t stop him from being one of the series most well-known characters.
About 90% of the Crossed issues depict situations that never happen in the stories themselves. Badlands suffers from this the most, with only a few arcs correctly depicting the characters and situations they are in. Naturally, fan scenarios about these covers started to pop up.
Ian, Prince Harry and the rest of their group from the first Badlands arc received one of the shortest storylines in the series despite being among some of its most interesting characters. Words cannot describe how cool it would have been for at least some of them to survive and cross-over with the Cavaites by appearing in Wish You Were Here And the same is also true of Harry, Paddy, Jock and Taff from The Fatal Englishman and Tom and Jackie from The Thin Red Line.
While the Crossed epidemic is a global problem, we only see its effects in America, Australia, England, Scotland and Japan, while several of the existing story arcs (such as Conquers All, Shrink or the Sutter's camp story arc) could have easily been set elsewhere in the world, like in South America, Africa or Russia (bonus with the protagonist of Conquers All being a Russian mobster), without greatly changing the plot. The most we get is covers of several issues, along with a special "Worldwide" collection of covers for the later Badlands arcs, most of which have nothing to do with the issue's plot in question (see above).
Lorna and her niece encountering Clooney and Nathan in the fourth Badlands arc doesn't go anywhere once they part ways. It would have been much better if she joined their travel to Samarkand, where she would have the chance to interact with other characters and probably even discover Gideon's dark secret and punish him for that. Her leading the defence of the estate during the final siege (and, probably, going down in a more heroic manner to save her niece instead of getting a Crossed fall on her randomly) would have also somewhat redeemed what's considered to be one of the weakest Badlands arcs.
There are Wish You Were Here fans who would like to pretend that everything after the second half of volume 3 never happened, given how the remaining storyline can feel rushed, and complex characters start undergoing Flanderization or get killed off in ways which feel disappointing even for this series.
The last of David Lapham's stories involving Amanda, Breakdown, is usually ignored not just because it pulls a Happy Ending Override to The Livers arc, but also because it feels too repetitive in comparison to The Livers and especially Psychopath (in that case, both stories have a mentally unstable person joining a group of survivors and killing them one by one, the only difference having Amanda herself be the murderer and also succeed in wiping the entire group out.)
First Installment Wins: The original run by Garth Ennis is considered by many to be superior to many other Crossed stories that are not Wish You Were Here or +100 due its memorable cast and more focus on the story rather than shock value. Badlands in particular got some flak due to inconsistent comic quality, even though there are notable exceptions such as Of the World in Its Becoming, The Fatal Englishman and The Thin Red Line, all of which had Ennis himself involved.
Despite how graphic and dark the original run by Garth Ennis was, a lot of the time when gorn or nudity could be used, there was a Scenery Censor or Gory Discretion Shot, alongside some really decent storylines and characters. The same cannot be said for many of the following comics. The direct follow-up, Family Values, is particularly considered the volume that started the whole descent into rape, incest, extreme gore and shoddy plotting.Badlands followed the same path, with the first arc (Of the World in Its Becoming, which also had Ennis' involvement) not relying on the violence and nudity too much and having interesting characters and unique situations, while the following arcs (particularly the second, Homo Superior) used gratuitous sex, nauseating Gorn, and an abundance of either flat and/or completely unsympathetic main characters, whether intended or not.
A Downer Ending (usually with an "Everybody Dies" Ending being thrown in just for the sake of it) has always been a problem with the Crossed volumes in general, but this tradition can be traced back to the very first Badlands arc, where the last issue opens with the alleged Prince Harry being bisected with a saw, with the rest of the cast promptly killed off or infected. Back then, it wasn't frowned upon as much given that other arcs beforehand had a somewhat bittersweet ending in one way or another, but some following Badlands arcs would typically end with a Total Party Kill (with likeable characters getting killed or infected), amplifying the bleakness of the whole franchise. Even larger stories like +100 didn't avoid it completely, since Bailey's army gets infected at the end by Sneezy's gambit, and even some of Bailey's detractors complained that he was given an utterly anticlimatic send-off.
Many potentially interesting plot twists and arcs went nowhere, and while Oliver's interesting method of disguising as Crossed got brushed off in The Quisling in favor of Smokey, it still felt somewhat necessary, given that it most likely wouldn't have been foolproof. Many other arcs that would follow, though, kept introducing many interesting plot lines and characters and then wasting them without hesitation in one way or another without much fanfare.
Growing the Beard: Wish You Were Here is generally considered a step forward in comparison to other Crossed arcs and thus gained much audience. Same thing can be said about +100 due to unique setting and characters (although the Future Slang may scare off some readers).
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: There's a lot of recurring stuff throughout different story arcs, but Christos Gage does this the worst. He essentially does three four-issue Smokey arcs and in all of them, the first issue or two involves him going after a human group, sparing a single survivor as a quisling, then spending the next 2-3 issues working hard to build some kind of society for the Crossed (or in Quisling, try to take down the human groups that could have formed societies), with a lot of Kick the Dog moments. Then, his efforts are ruined by betrayal from someone intelligent who he relied on (his human prisoner the first two times, then his wives).
Sweeney from Yellow Belly starts out as a typical hillbilly bully, but when the Crossed arive and kill his father (who beneath the alcoholic abuser facade still cared for his son) it becomes easy to sympathize with him. Even his ultimate stance to take down as many Crossed as he would could be interpreted as grief from losing both his father and his classmates in less than a single day.
Clancy from Shrink is unnaturally abusive towards his brother Jack, but we find out the exact reason he's been this way in the final issue - namely, that he had been molested by his brother Jack and ignored by his parents every time.
Shaky is a selfish and manipulative man who is often willing to manipulate, abandon, bully and endanger people in the name of goals that often fail anyway and has a Questionable Consent sex scene in his last flashback. However, his constant desire to do something good, severe guilt about many of his worst actions, genuine desire to help his community as a whole, his long series of personal losses, and the way he eventually get the Silent Treatment and then worse from his friends make him a character that many readers can still pity throughout his Kick the Dog moments.
Volume 1: Cindy is the cold but competent leader of a group of survivors making their way toward Alaska. Showing great strength and altruism from day one, Cindy saved several survivors during the chaos of C-Day and quickly took the leadership role. She proved herself highly effective against the Crossed and was always willing to make the hard calls, such as killing cannibalistic children and allowing Kitrick to execute Geoff after he becomes a menace to the group. After losing her son Cindy becomes broken before separating from the group with Stan to give her son a proper burial. Returning to discover their group was wiped out by the Crossed, Cindy snaps back to her old tactical self, realizing that the maniacs are half-dead and vulnerable, and convinces Stan to avenge their fallen companions, a plan that they execute flawlessly.
Family Values: Adaline Pratt is the eldest daughter of the Pratt Family, who’s main goal is to protect her family, primarily from the rampaging Crossed and her evil pedophilic father Joseph. An experienced and hardened survivor who has no qualms shooting a running man to track Crossed, Adaline quickly deduces his seemingly reformed father’ horrid actions which causes the death of one of her sisters, and the confrontation ends in her father’s death and mother’s infection. She trains most of her family to be experienced fighters to hunt and kill Crossed, and manages to divert attention around Harris’ bandit group. After losing several family members and people, Adaline gets her family under the sewers and manages to escape the Crossed, doing a split second amputation to save her brother and kills her infected mom, successfully saving what’s left of her family and giving a new chance at surviving.
Badlands Issue #57-61: Sutter is a hardened survivor who wishes to take out as many of the Crossed as possible as a last act of defiance. An expert sniper and trap master, Sutter saved over 60 people in order to build a community, but inserted bombs around the community all to lure in the Crossed to the location so he could destroy as many of them as possible, willing to sacrifice his men to do it. A fearless person who nearly succeeds in blowing the place up himself, he goes toe to toe with Esperanza and Jane and nearly eggs the upper hand and when left for dead by the two, still manages to kill several Crossed even without a hand, and simply curses the infected Alejandro before he himself is infected. Despite his infection, he manages to get the last laugh, with Esperanza and Jane deciding to activate the bombs to wipe out the entire Crossed horde, including the infected Sutter, and his last trap even manages to get Alejandro, showing Sutter won in the end.
Badlands (Issues #62-70): Gavin Edward Land is a former officer out for revenge on the thugs who raped and killed his daughter. Sent to prison after attempting to assassinate Curtis Wentz, resulting in the deaths of four innocents, Gavin cuts a deal with the Warden to keep the prison running until the outbreak. Arming his fellow inmates and escaping with them, Gavin tracks down and murders his daughter's killers one by one, sometimes lying about being willing to spare them until they cease being useful to him. Forming a tense truce with Wentz to save San Diego, Gavin repels the local Crossed, even hijacking a tank with Wentz to push them back. Fleeing to an island, Gavin discovers his ex-wife and son are still alive and kills Wentz to fulfill his vengeance, before setting out to find his family.
Five Bloody Fingers:
Satoshi is the friend of Hazuki and titular group who wishes to reunite and protect their friends within the infamous C-Day. An already capable survivor who murder Crossed with ease, he easily clears the streets out with Hazuki's mob boss father Yamada and his friends. Deciding to uphold getting to Hazuki and Miku as a priority, he orders his friend to shoot down construction to separate them from Boss Yamada and his men, leaving them to the Crossed so they can get away and resulting in several of their deaths. Not fearing Boss Yamada for betraying him and showing to be capable to wiping out the Crossed horde inside the building, even personally ordering the wipe out of the last remaining ones himself, Satoshi agrees that since they are cornered and have nowhere to go, they decide to make a Last Stand against the Crossed. Having himself and his friends willingly infected by Hazuki, Satoshi and his friends all end up fighting side by side in a glorious death as friends against the Crossed Horde outside.
Hazuki is the daughter of Yakuza boss Yamada and Satoshi's childhood friend. Despite being abusively raised to become a cold killer and desiring to take control of her father's syndicate, Hazuki cares greatly for her friends and protects them with her connections and own strength. Trapped at a festival with her friend Miku during the Crossed's emergence, Hazuki murders the Crossed with ease and plots a course with the support of her friends and father to draw out and pick away at the numbers of the attacking Crossed. Despite being infected herself, Hazuki retains enough of her sanity to stop her wicked father from killing Satoshi, calling him out for all his crimes and leading to Yamada's suicide. Firmly refusing to turn on her friends even as the infection worsens, Hazuki decides to join the group in a Last Stand against the attackers, infecting them as well so they can all die fighting one last battle together.
Wish You Were Here: Rab Harcus is in charge of the Cavas Islands and contrasts his co-leader Don's arrogant, shortsightedness with intelligence and care for the residents. Creating a system to defend against the Crossed, Rab hosts a raffle he ensures no bias with to determine who will venture out for supplies, catching on to Shaky's attempts to game the system. Fear-mongering the residents into helping raid the Driftfleet for supplies, Rab's plan only fails thanks to the whistleblowing Jackson and Don’s arrogance. When the Aoleinne's Crossed horde reach Cavas Islands, Rab leads a daring mission to lure the Crossed to a ship and bomb it, while the survivors flee the island. Crippling Shaky to leave for bait after deciding he's too dangerous to keep around, Rab manages to get the rest of his people to safety, winning against Aoleinne's Crossed.
Many memetic quotes can be salvaged from the Future Slang of +100.
Narm: In Crossed +100, the Future Slang used by most of the cast frequently sounds like text-messaging shorthand, enshrining typos and Mondegreens and employing a steeply limited vocabulary. This can result in very serious moments and conversations taking on the tone of Facebook messages between twelve-year-olds or the infamous "I cri evrytiem" copypasta - for example, a character somberly proclaiming "I heart you" before shooting an infected lover in the head.
Crossed +100 is generally considered a good work, but the fans will have hard time forgetting about its characters using a notorious and utterly bizarre Future Slang.
Many people were disappointed when Cody's bunker arc eventually turned into a rehash of Quisling, with Cody himself becoming suspiciously similar to Oliver, not even turning into a Foil to him.
Various Crossed, often combined with maximum Squick.
The cowboy who directs Land and Haley to where Wentz is conducting his rescue operations.
The people Ian hid with in Badlands 2 (especially the three Leader Wannabe's arguing, the mother conflicted about whether to stay there or leave, and the man with a sling nervously keeping watch at the window).
Ann Cooke the teacher turned reluctant cannibal.
Sweeney's father appears for only a couple of pages, yet is memorable for ultimately being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, despite having been mistreating his son moments before the Crossed appear.
The one-armed farmer who briefly travels with Clooney and Nathan trying to get back to Samarkand.
The obese Crossed in Shaky's flashback who keeps talking about "assburgers".
The patrol boat captain Smokey kills for pressing his Berserk Button in the middle of the mans attempts to become his quisling.
Bailey's fellow refugee leaders in +100 #11, with their stories about fleeing from the tide of the Crossed.
The various prehistoric animals the Blood Men use in their Gladiator Games in Homo Tortor, which include mammoths, woolly rhinos, saber-toothed cats, and even a Diprotodon.
Shock Fatigue: As the comics progress, each new arc tries to top the last one in terms of shock value, and it becomes increasingly difficult to be that fazed by all the blood, guts and absurdly over-the-top violence. For instance, the scene in Volume One where the Crossed simultaneously gang-rape and mutilate a family was considered unbelievably horrific when it was released. Such a scene wouldn't even raise an eyebrow anymore.
Squick: DEAR.GOD. There are so many to count, that the comic might as well be called this. The Crossed take great pleasure in causing the most horrific and disgusting acts of inhumanity possible. Examples include suffocating a dolphin by raping its blow hole, masturbating on bullets as a way of spreading the virus more efficiently, molesting dismembered corpses, using a severed horse penis as a billy club and a pregnant woman tearing apart her own stomach so she can eat her unborn baby. It's, uh, pretty sick!
Strawman Has a Point: An unusual in-universe case, resulting from the story being told by an Unreliable Narrator. Don and Jasper from the "Wish You Were Here" webcomic arc are both assholes, and Shaky portrays all of their planning for sorties and "fightback" as suicidally stupid. The sortie actually goes fairly well, though, and even Shaky recognizes that just staying on Cava isn't a viable option if only because human nature won't allow it. In the +100 arc, it's revealed that surviving bands of humans eventually did fight back, and a century hence outnumber the Crossed 2 to 1 even in the worst affected areas.
Having Harold make an appearance in the final issue of the third arc had tons of potential, but his role is limited to convincing Edmund to have sex with the dead body of Nicole for no reason other than to set up a requisite Downer Ending to the story.
Similarly, the Gamekeeper's appearance at the end of the third volume of Wish You Were Here had lots of potential, especially since both Shaky and the readers believed him to be dead a long time ago. Unfortunately, when the fourth volume rolls around, his role is reduced to Aoileann's prisoner and does nothing more than act as a vitriolic Mr. Exposition to Shaky. While this does reveal much of the off-panel events and gives much more credibility to Aoileann, the Gamekeeper himself does not really do anything afterwards and then gets killed by Shaky off-panel in the final issue. Even his death is described by Rab rather than shown outright, which might rob some extra catharsis from the viewers.
Having Smokey's attack on Cheyenne Mountain turn into an anticlimatic Curb-Stomp Battle that was only lasted a single issue feels fairly lazy on Christos Gage's part, when it could have been a drawn-out siege or infiltration where Smokey experienced more difficulty than usual.
Shrink features an isolated town the Crossed haven't reached yet but hardly there's only one person in the town to receive any dialogue besides the three main characters. It would have been interesting to have an attempted defense of the town as a subplot or at least show Jack's neighbors reacting to his attempts to psychoanalyze a Crossed instead of just his girlfriend.
The plot of Homo Tortor arc is about Washington trying to discover what truly happened 75000 years ago, which could bring out potential secrets and even possible origins behind the pandemic, besides those we see in Thin Red Line. What does it ultimately lead to? Nothing. Lion gets abruptly killed by a monster that was barely foreshadowed, and the whole story turns out to be an in-universe fantasy written by a Visionary Villain.
The Thin Red Line features characters not holding the Idiot Ball and showcases a large-scale government response to the Crossed outbreak, which at least until the very end seems to be fairly effective. A version of the comic where instead of having it be After the End it involves the world trying to respond to the emergence of the Crossed could be quite interesting. Think World War Z only with the fight being more desperate owing to the Crossed's It Can Think tendencies.
The first half of the final Badlands arc features a bunker full of people who have little if any experience of survival. It could have made a story on its own, with the premise being similar to Wish You Were Here and involving characters surviving in one place rather than traveling from point A to point B. But after Smokey shows up by the end of the first issue, he cuts off the group's escape and slaughters most of them in the very next one. Afterwards, the rest of the arc borrows a lot of plot elements from Quisling, another Badlands story, with Cody only being spared so he would become a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Oliver from the aforementioned arc and have to assist Smokey in his goals.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It's hard to care about the characters when you know the vast majority of them will either die or become Crossed. The Crossed series puts The Walking Dead to shame with its willingness to kill off characters.
