The Crow and Christmas. Sounds crazy, no? Especially to those of us who have spent the past 25 years or so treating the film adaptation of Eric Draven’s dark and bloody quest for vengeance as a Halloween hallmark.
And the CROW: HARK THE HERALD one shot’s alternate retailer exclusive cover adds even more unsettling surreality to this concept by showing us a smiling, shirtless Draven type unwrapping an assault rifle – a rather ugly and callow image, given these troubling times of mass shootings and our cultural concerns about glorifying them. (To say nothing of the fact that Brandon Lee, the movie’s star, famously died from a gunshot wound.)
Still, here we are.
The concept – as sketched out rather lazily on the first page via typed exposition – is mildly interesting, and worthy of a one-shot … just not one featuring the Crow. Every year at Christmas, the six most prolific killers in America gather to eat together, exchange gifts and watch holiday specials in an attempt to enjoy this time of year the way normal people do. “Now,” the opening exposition concludes with lurid glee, “last year’s sins have risen from the grave, ready to deliver the gift of revenge. The Crow Knows Who Has Been Naughty.”
The Raven and the Gift of Vengeance
Putting aside the fact that scribe Tim Seeley starts off by breaking the cardinal storytelling rule of “show, don’t tell,” the writing seems awfully cutesy for something based on James O’Barr’s bitterly personal tale of loss and rage. The original comic series may not have been especially revolutionary in its plot, but it struck a chord with readers because it was so fundamentally fueled by the O’Barr’s raw sorrow – and because it resonated with the zeitgeist of a generation just starting to confront its own moribund and nihilistic angst in the form of the goth movement.
By contrast, HERALD’s setup feels like it could work just as well for a story about Bullseye, Deadpool, Deadshot, Punisher or a dozen other “killers-who-kill-killers.” Yes, the Crow – in this case, a girl who was murdered along with her father at these killers’ last holiday get-together – has a personal ax to grind with regard to the casual brutality that claimed their lives. But is her “tragedy” memorable? Does it, for example, compare to the shocking and senseless horror of what happened to Draven and his bride?
No.
The narration’s purple prose has brief moments of profundity, or at least the appearance of it. Likewise, there are a handful of lines of dialogue that are clever as well, but most of them are fairly flat and uninspired – particularly compared to the snappy patter of the similar “meeting of the world’s most hardcore killers” concept that was so smartly and entertainingly presented in ASSASSIN NATION.
Stereotypical Villains and a Disappointing Ending that Fails to Achieve Redemption.
The bad guys come across as stock characters imbued with uninventive gimmicks. We’ve got the obligatory Russian, the Asian, the guy who quotes the Bible a lot, blah blah blah. Their yearly attempt at normalcy could yield a lot of laughs and interesting exchanges, but instead, it’s glossed over. The ending makes an attempt at providing a sincere emotional moment of redemption but drops the ball, coming off as abrupt and unsatisfying.
It’s disappointing, since Seeley has previously shown so much talent and cleverness – most recently, in the premiere issue of MONEY SHOT, which he penned with Sarah Beattie for Vault Comics. It’s hard to account for such a massive disparity in terms of quality, except to shrug and say, “Well, they can’t all be winners, can they?”
Meredith Laxton’s art is solid, but like the plot, it doesn’t particularly feel like “The Crow” either. The style would be perfectly serviceable in many other types of books, but it lacks the fundamental darkness and edge that defined previous installments of this series. A death scene in which one of the killers is 12-pointed on a set of mounted antlers should get under our skin in terms of sheer gore, but here, it feels humdrum. In fact, it’s entirely probable that the art is a big reason it’s so hard to invest in anything that happens. There’s no depth in the facial expressions, no terror in the scares.
In short, and at the risk of seeming unnecessarily unkind in this season of giving: If you’re considering buying CROW: HARK THE HERALD for someone as a Christmas present, you may as well just put a lump of coal in their stocking.