Comic Company Founder Passes at 65

CrossGen Comics Founder and CEO Mark Alessi passed away over the weekend; he was 65.  Although Alessi hasn’t been involved with the comics business for nearly 15 years, his company had an ambitious run in the early 00s and he’s still remembered for his impact on the business.

Alessi’s first act was as founder of IT consulting firm Technical Resource Connection, which was sold to Perot Systems in 1996.  In 1998 he founded CrossGen Comics, which quickly ramped up a major Tampa-based publishing operation with a roster of staff talent that included Mark Waid, Barbara Kesel, and Ron Marz.  The company started publishing monthly comics in a shared universe in January of 2000. Through its brief history, CrossGen made an effort to treat its creative talent well, saw the opportunities in taking comic characters to other media, led some early experiments in the book trade and educational markets, and unlike many new publishers put its monthly periodicals out on schedule. 

We talked to Alessi, who wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions on the state of the comics business, about CrossGen and his view of the industry in 2002 (see “Interview with CrossGen’s Mark Alessi”). 

By 2003, the company was starting to run short of cash and Alessi was candid about what was going on in another interview with ICv2 (see “Interview with CrossGen CEO Mark Alessi”).

The company ended up losing over $15 million, and the assets were sold to Disney Publishing in a court-supervised liquidation (see “CrossGen ‘Reorganization’ Plan OK’D”).  The last we heard of Alessi, he was headed back to the IT world (see “Mark Alessi Goes Back to IT Consulting”), but his tenure in the comics space left a marker for subsequent comic start-ups to measure themselves against.