A surprise Halloween thread, last night was Dracula, this time it's the Crow, myself I never look at Halloween as a time of horror media, I look at it as time of DARK media in the night, and this is a sad story about a lot of death real and imagine.

the Crow started as a comic like all franchises you know started as an INDIE comic, initially published by Calibur comics it was one of the big indie comics of it's day. It's inspiration does come from something really sad.

The Crow comic was inspired by the death of his fiancee at the hands of a drunk driver, and the comic was his way of dealing with the pain. Knowing that it's kind of hard to give the most fair look this is man channeling his emotions in his work.

It's not a happy story but there are unique aspects about it most stories like this would make the man Eric the hero oft the story kills into the worst people, and no one is an angel in this, but there are moments of humanity.

The story of the Crow is a simple one, hell the movie did a good job of summing it up but Eric come backs from the dead to write the wrong that was done to him and his love, and avenger there deaths. This is the Spectre by way of the Punisher.

One unique aspect about this comic, is that James changes styles depending on the scene. Sometimes adding more detail and giving it a nice painted look. James shockingly has never worked for the big two only outside them which is impressive for any American Creator.

His style is very GOTHIC but has elements from Will Eisner. Will tended to have his characters be very messy in action scenes you can see that in the Crow. The Spirit was also getting reprints around that time to keep it in the public conscious.

The comic is more violent and manic. The clown motif is played with and Eric is violent. But the comic doesn't paint it as a good thing. There is a unique maturity from it that is often lacking in other works like this.

The origin of Eric is the most important aspect about him, because it drives everything going forward. This is a revenge story and it's not a nice one. This story does not puss out in the end either, sometimes violence just leaves nothing.

You can see why the comic got picked up for an adaption and everything else. The comic and the movie are SIMILAR enough the characters names for the most part, but the movie and the comic do have different angles to them on the same story.

The first trade is often around and I would check it out if you like indie comics from the 80's, especially the dark ones. Now we get to sad story and how the comics evolved based on one of more tragic Hollywood stories.

The Crow 94 movie was a HUGE hit at the time and it's influence ended up in some of the weirdest places. But it's famous for the death of Brandon Lee on set that would not cause some reshoots and safety standards being raised. He's often compared to his father Bruce Lee.

and this death also weighed on James, while it's not his fault in any way, He did work on the movie and liked Brandon. Having a man die adapting a work that dealt with those themes of mourning is not exactly something that you can recover from.

Whatever the case James did continue the Crow for a while but letting other people handle it with Movies and comics galore. That I might cover because a bunch of them are more unknown.

The movie series I might do a coverage on separately because they are interesting stories one movie adapted from a book actually took out all the Queer content of the original story. There was also a tv show that I saw on Sci-fi once.

There is also the wrestler we all know and confuse for the singer sometimes Sting. The man called Sting had a surfer standard face gimmick for a bit before the mid to late 90's made him change into the Crow gimmick that he would keep and tweak over the decades.

For a bit the Crow was given over to Spawn studio's over at Image the comic was a remake of the classic series but turned into an ongoing like the tv show it was cancelled at 9 though.

Whatever the case there is a bit of a bittersweet ending to this, James was later able to get in contact with Brandon's significant other and move on from the events. Launching more comics and reprints of the classics at IDW.

Whatever the case the Crow inspired many things in the 90's, mostly goth fashion sense for dudes, but this little story inspired so much for a reason, if your okay with venturing out of horror for Halloween this dark comic is worth a look.