Checker Books has the license to print more volumes of CrossGen’s trade paperbacks. For instance, Volumes 1-4 of Sojourn were released by CrossGen, but they never got around to issuing trades for the rest of the series, so now CrossGen has released Volume 5 this month.

Today, I created a new CrossGen trade paperbacks store, with the new Checker releases front-loaded to page 1. I don’t know if Checker can republish any out-of-print trades (some of the later trades such as the second volume of Way of the Rat appear to have been printed in very low numbers and are hard to find).

I’d love to see more volumes of Route 666 and Ruse, as well, plus trades for Brath and El Cazador.

Checker, it appears, has the rights to the books and isn’t paying the creators anything. It sucks, especially since I’m friends with Dixon and Scott Beatty and I really think an honest company would throw some small payment their way, but Checker is under no obligations to make good on CrossGen’s commitments. I know, bloodless corporations are unfair and all that, but DC, for example, has paid Chuck and the artist some royalties for redesigning Firefly into a marketable character, even though they had no legal obligation since they were redesigning a character that DC owned.

Another consideration: what are the legalities of releasing CrossGen’s unprinted work, possibly even finishing half-completed stories? Chuck Dixon had a finale for winding up Sigil with issue #43, but the book was suddenly canceled with #42. Could Checker release a Sigil volume 7 (which will be short, otherwise, covering only issues 39-42) with the finished story, making that last volume far more marketable? Same goes for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and many other works that were probably in various stages of completion when CrossGen imploded.

This way the fans get closure, Checker has more material to market (and more of a selling point for the volumes) and the creators could get a little payment for their work. It’s worth considering, if Checker has the legal right to do it. I realize Checker is a reprint company, but it’s not without merit.