the crow: skinning the wolves preview

7/28/2019 The Crow: Skinning the Wolves Preview

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J A M E S O B a r r j i m T e r r y


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For

Harvey Kurtzman

and

Jack Davis


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Story and Breakdowns by

JAMES OBARRStory and Art by

JIM TERRYColors by

TOM ZIUKOwith an assist by

JIM TERRYSeries Edits by

CHRIS RYALLCover by

JAMES OBARRCollection Edits by

JUSTIN EISINGERand

ALONZO SIMONCollection Design by

TOM B. LONG

The Crowcreated by James OBarr

THE CROW: SKINNING THE WOLVES. MAY 2013. FIRST PRINTING. 2013 James OBarr (under exclusive license to Top Dollar Comics, Inc and Crowvision, Inc. exclusively licensed to IDW Publishing). THE CROW and The Crow, the original motion picture 1994 Crowvision, Inc. Used with permission. All Rights Reserved. IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 5080 Santa Fe Street, San Diego,CA 92109. The IDW logo is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contentsof this publication may be reprinted without the permission of Crowvision, Inc. Printed in Korea.IDW Publishing does not read or accept unsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork.

Originally published as THE CROW: SKINNI NG THE WOLVES Issues #13.

www.IDWPUBLISHING.com

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Ted Adams, CEO & PublisherGreg Goldstein, President & COORobbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic ArtistChris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-ChiefMatthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial OfficerAlan Payne, VP of SalesDirk Wood, VP of MarketingLorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

IDW founded by Ted Adams, Alex Garner, Kris Oprisko, and Robbie Robbins

ISBN: 978-1-61377-610-0 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4

Special thanks to Edward R. Pressman, Jon Katz, & Melissa Glassman.


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i N T R O D U C T i O N

I think it was Lina Wermuller's Seven Beauties.

I'd seen photos and grainy black and white footage of Nazi concentration camps before, but her film brought forth the real filth, stink, death,

and horror of the World War II death camps (though it is only a small portion of the film). As I am want to do when I see injustice, my first

impulse is always to smash something; though admittedly it is juvenile and misguided at best. Breaking a wrong does not make a right. The idea

for a retribution strip was born there, in the parking lot of Detroit's only midnight art-house theater, now long gone.

Some time later, Steve Bissett was putting together a really amazing anthology of stories that bordered on outrageous to obscene, called Taboo,

and asked if Id like to contribute something to it. No editorial input, no censorship, it just had to be mean, or funny, or push some buttons, and

this story, called "The Night Train" back then, did all of those things. I was smack in the middle of my last issue of The Crow and couldn't find

time to do more than rough layouts, so I called in my partner in crime at the time, John Bergin, to help out with pencils. When it comes to

"disturbed" stories, John is the CEO of fucked up shit, which is why we got along swimmingly. The rough pencils layouts in the back of this

book are by John from my notebook page scribbles.

Sadly, Taboowas cancelled (being far ahead of its time), the Crow took over my life with the release of the film, and John and I eventually

lost touch. Until recently.

"Hey, guess what I found propping up my stereo? That Night Train story" he said recently, and kindly sent them back to me to ink. Problem

was that John draws PRINTED SIZE, and that is beyond beI have no one hair brushes. I planned to blow them up to comic size (11" x 17") and

ink them when a opening in my ever-increasing schedule arose, which, obviously, never did. Still, it was a good solid story with the opportunity

for tremendous violence (I evidently have unresolved anger issues), so it sat next to my drawing board for a year or two.

In the meantime, I was weeding through some of the nonsense people drop off at my table during conventions and came across a photocopiedbook by some guy named Jim Terry, whom I did not recall meeting (he later told me he just flipped it on my table and walked away without

speaking), that was astonishingly well done. Very Eisner-esque. So I dropped him a line and told him so. "Nice work, Jim. We should do something

together sometime." Most offers like this come to nothing as the artists move on to real jobs, stuffing envelopes, working at Kinkos, and

becoming bitter because no one cknowledged their untapped genius. Jim was different, and I watched as he continued to grow and learn.

I like to think I helped him in that respect by pointing out other artists to look at besides Eisner (the EC artists in particular), but really

I think he would have come to that by himself; real talent wills itself out and will not be suffocated.

So recently, when the kind folks at IDW asked me if I would like to work on some new Crow-related books, or could I write as well as drawsome new mini-series, Jim was at the top of the list of folks to work with. A fascination with World War II, our love of film techniques in

comics (camera angles, ighting, movement), and our the personal demons we each wrestle with made us a good team. Though this was never

intended to be a Crow story it was easily adapted into such. Justice and revenge are universal themes after all.

What you see here is Jim Terry let loose. I gave him what was essentially a B-movie storyline and he took off with it like a prize winning

racehorse. The final book, or chapter if you will, really has more emotional impact and dynamics than I could have brought to it. I just wanted

to kill a bunch of German soldiers in gruesome ways and Jim elevated it to moral levels I would not have thought to explore. If you pay

attention to the staging and the way ideas and metaphors circle back around, you will find a lot of depth and thought under the surface.

My thanks to John Bergin, IDW, and in particular to Jim Terry for making this an exceptional book that I am proud of.

James O'Barr

April 2013


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the crow: skinning the wolves preview

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