When James O’Barr came up with the idea for The Crow in 1981, all he wanted it to achieve was emotional catharsis. He was a 21- year-old US Marine stationed in Berlin, still reeling from the death of his fiancée at the hands of a drunk driver a few years earlier while they were still in high school. He didn’t know if the comic he was writing and drawing would ever get published.
“It was just a way of getting it down on paper,” James told The Los Angeles Times in 1994, referring to the grief he still felt. “I had never done anything that personal before.”
