The Crow #1

History

O'Barr began sketching pages for The Crow around 1981 while stationed as a U.S. Marine in West Berlin, using the act of drawing as a means of processing the death of his fiancée, who had been killed by a drunk driver before he enlisted; a Detroit newspaper story about a young couple murdered over a twenty-dollar engagement ring provided additional narrative inspiration. He worked on the pages intermittently for roughly six to eight years — describing the process as anything but cathartic — before connecting with Gary Reed, who was launching Caliber Press out of Detroit. Reed spotted O'Barr's artwork (partly through T-shirt designs O'Barr had been producing for a local shop Reed owned) and, despite having mixed early feelings about the project's unrelenting tone, agreed to publish it; The Crow debuted in the Caliber Presents #1 anthology in January 1989 and the solo series launched the following month. Financial difficulties at Caliber eventually cut the planned five-issue run to four issues, leaving the concluding chapter, 'Death,' unpublished until Tundra Publishing reprinted the series and released that finale in 1992.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published February 1989 by Caliber Press; written, drawn, and cover-illustrated entirely by James O'Barr — the only creator credited on the issue.
• Chronologically the second appearance of Eric / The Crow, following the 8-page story 'Inertia' in Caliber Presents #1 (January 1989), which served as a prelude to the solo series.
• The issue is subtitled 'Book One: Pain' and opens the four-chapter arc in which the supernaturally resurrected Eric methodically hunts the gang members — Tin-Tin, Tom-Tom, Top Dollar, Funboy, and T-Bird — responsible for his murder and that of his fiancée, Shelly.
• Presented in black-and-white, 32 pages, and labeled Mature Readers — formatting and content choices that placed it firmly in the small-press independent tradition rather than the mainstream direct-market.
• Three printings of The Crow #1 were produced; all three are visually identical and can be distinguished only by the date printed in the indicia on the inside front cover (1st printing: February 1989; 2nd printing: October 1989; 3rd printing: June 1990).
• The Caliber four-issue run was left incomplete when financial pressures halted the series; a planned fifth chapter titled 'Death' was not published until Tundra Publishing reprinted and concluded the story in 1992.
• Kitchen Sink Press collected the complete story as a graphic novel in 1993, and Gallery Books later released The Crow: Special Edition (2011), which added new pages O'Barr had originally omitted for space reasons.
• The 1994 film adaptation directed by Alex Proyas — and shadowed by the on-set death of star Brandon Lee — brought the characters and story from this issue to a mass audience, cementing the comic's status as a touchstone of 1990s alternative culture.

Cast · 2 characters

Full credits

Variants (2)