Augie’s new article on CBR, CrossGen is dead; long live CrossGen, is one of the best assessments of CrossGen, pro and con, that I’ve seen in a while. It nails a stake through a lot of Internet sniping while raising serious criticisms of its own…and praising the company where that praise is deserved. Augie has also responded to some comments about this column on Chuck Dixon’s messageboard.

I, for one, have a slightly different take. I just don’t understand how so many can think that a failure of funding (due to a sudden pullout of a financial backer and a spending/income cycle that has left them short of cash) is a failure of the business model itself. To put it in plain English: if a truck crashes through the wall of your bakery, it doesn’t mean you were wrong to put a bakery there. I’d like to hope that CrossGen will consider their old payment model when they can once again afford to resume it.

Plus, I’ve said this before, but if this financial crunch (and the already proposed Crisis-like mini-series The War) gives CrossGen a great excuse to bring to an end a few of their less coherent and vaguely-titled comics, and then launch a few more down-to-Earth books with more memorable characters, it could be a blessing in disguise.