Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Extraction | 1995 | Andrew Vachss | N/A |
| 2 | Genesis | 1995 | Andrew Vachss | N/A |
| 3 | Blackjack | 2012 | Andrew Vachss | Buy |
| 4 | The Bet | 1995 | Andrew Vachss | N/A |
| 5 | Urban Renewal | 2014 | Andrew Vachss | Buy |
| 6 | Circle Of Skulls | 1996 | Andrew Vachss | N/A |
| 7 | Drawing Dead | 2016 | Andrew Vachss | Buy |
| 8 | The Circle Broken | 1996 | Andrew Vachss | N/A |
| 9 | Cross 5 | 2006 | Andrew Vachss | N/A |
The Cross series is Andrew Vachss’s venture into graphic novel storytelling, running across nine installments from 1995 to 2016. The title character, Cross, is a mercenary and leader of a crew that operates in a violent urban landscape. Unlike Burke, who is driven by a protective instinct toward children, Cross is more of a pure operator, taking jobs for money and survival. The series launched with the graphic novels Extraction, Genesis, and The Bet in 1995 before continuing with later entries.
The series shifted formats over the years. The early installments were traditional graphic novels, while later books like Blackjack (2012), Urban Renewal (2014), and Drawing Dead (2016) were published as prose novels. This mix of visual and written storytelling gives the Cross series a different texture from Vachss’s other work, though his trademark street-level crime sensibility runs through all of it. Readers familiar with the Burke novels will recognize Vachss’s hard-boiled voice, even in a different medium.