My take on...

...The Crow

I’m not talking about the movies or television series. Those are set in different mediums that have their own issues with beating a (literally) dead character into the ground. I’m referring here to the comics.

I have the trade paperback published by Kitchen Sink Press that came out in 1994. It has all three of the Tundra books, the original appearance from Caliber Presents #1 and newer artwork by O’Barr. I’m not going to go into the details of the story; you can read about that here.

Eric’s traumatic journey strikes so many chords with me; I end up crying every time I read it. O’Barr went through some deep tragedy in his youth that had to be expressed. Eric, Shelly, Captain Hook (and of course T-Bird and the others) all came from that tragedy. In short, O’Barr created a story about pain and loss that needed to be told.

With this particular publication, you can compare O’Barr’s newer artwork with the older, and see how much he’s grown as an artist, which represents how much he has grown as a person living with grief.

So imagine my surprise when I look up The Crow on ComicVine.com and find four additional names.

To me, Eric is so connected with his creator that I have difficulty accepting the need for other Crow characters. I understand enough of the business side of comics to recognize the existence of ‘sequels’, and to be honest, they may be well written works that evoke strong feelings of retribution, vengeance or justice.

I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t read them.

I just don’t think they were necessary.

I believe everything that needed to be done with the character, O’Barr accomplished.

Another way to watch a DVD...

This is technically about movies, but it pertains specifically to the Iron Man DVD I just bought.

I have a decent collection of DVD's filling a bookshelf in our living room. My main purpose for buying discs, especially now as more and more movies become available online, are for the extras. Bells and Whistles are all I'm about with DVD's.

Commentaries, interviews, trivia, behind the scenes stuff, the making of.

I like to spend hours watching all the stuff provided an every disk, but I end up getting bored. Usually because it involves watching the same film repeatedly with the different commentaries.

I saw this film in the theatre, and rented it once after it came out. I love this movie, and have no regrets buying it. I just don't want to get bored.

So this time I'm going with a different approach.

I'm going to watch the extras first - before watching the movie.

We'll see what happens...