The Crow 2 page 7 James O'Barr

I had always read super hero comic books. In junior high, I had found the collections of EC Comics at my local library and spent hours looking through them and reading them. I discovered Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. I had read Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Arkham Asylum. I would get into the Sandman series pretty soon. But There was The Crow.

I had heard about the movie and sought out the comics and I was blown away. The story alone was very different than what I'd read before. The art was quite different, with it's mixture of styles. What was the game changer for me was the feeling that was put into the story. Reading it and going back and reading it again, there was feeling there on every page. Sometimes true art is born from raw emotion and that appears to be the case here. James O'Barr working through issues had created a masterpiece.

Many years later, I found myself in the lucky position to be able to get an original page from the series. I got the page in the mail, opened it, and ooked at it and was just stunned. As if often the case with these things the page looks so much better in person than the printed version does. Much like the comic and the story that it tells, the art is more than pencil lines, brush strokes, and words, but there is feeling in this page of art. Holding the original you get that sense as you look upon it.

I owe a bit of thanks here to Edmond Yanga for making this possible and working out the deal with me. I owe a bigger amount of thanks to James O'Barr for telling this story and putting it to page.