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“The Crow: Lethe” #2

By | June 18th, 2020
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The Crow was a pretty famous underground comic written by James O’Barr and was published in the late 1980’s and became popular in the early 90’s. It was a dark, brooding, and haunting tale of Gothic love and horror that dealt with deeply personal loss and vengeance. You might remember the more famous 1994 movie adaptation starring Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee. The movie was okay, although it was more infamous for the tragic death of its star after he was accidentally shot on set.

Now, IDW Publishing is taking a rather bold approach towards reviving the franchise, not with a reprint of the old book, but with a brand new story under the title of The Crow: Lethe.

Let’s see if it’s any good.

Cover by: Peach Momoko
Written by Tim Seeley
Illustrated by Ilias Kyriazas
Colored by Katrina Mae Hao
Lettered by Samuel Murray

Null Narcos, the Man Who Knows no pain, is accused of murdering the woman who brought him into the Freak Chic sideshow. With giant holes in his memory, even Null isn’t sure he’s innocent. But he’ll have to decide soon, as a sinister force that eats crows hunts his friends. From writer/artist Tim Seeley (Green Lanterns, Nightwing, Shatterstar).

“The Crow: Lethe” #2 opens with the cast of a carnival sideshow being interrogated by the police for the gruesome murder of their leader and a random maintenance worker. The focus of the investigation falls on the main character: a newcomer named Null Narcos who only has a few scattered memories of who he is and is incapable of feeling pain. Fortunately, Narcos and his friend Lady Benga manage to make their escape before the cops can peg the murders on them. Unfortunately, stranger and darker forces are at work here and it turns out that the real murderer is loose and has set his eye on Narcos and his friends.

The writing duties for “The Crow: Lethe” #2 go to Tim Seeley, and he is probably the best writer for this kind of story. Seeley does two things really well. First, the characters are very well written. The cops may be suspicious and judgemental, but they are also well spoken and intelligent. The circus freaks may look weird and feel awkward in some places, but it’s very clear they care about each other and would fight to the death to protect each other. But the star of the show is Narcos himself, who is a man who comes back from the dead but doesn’t want to remember how or why he died and would prefer to spend the rest of his life feeling numb. His amnesia actually makes him a better character, instead of acting as a crutch for the story.

The second thing the writing does well is expand the lore of the source material. The Crow franchise is all about people coming back from the dead in order to avenge some great loss and their souls are tied to the body of a crow. Seeley takes this premise and explores what would happen if that process was corrupted. When Narcos refused to remember how he died it allowed a killer to be set loose upon the Earth who won’t stop until everyone Narcos loves is dead. While the killer does have some stilted and strange dialogue, it’s a fascinating premise that promises to deliver a very interesting story.

The artwork for “The Crow: Lethe” #2 is also fantastic. Artist Ilias Kyriazis draws the characters with a sense of exaggerated and cartoonish realism, meaning the people look realistic enough for the reader to tell they are people but their faces and bodies are drawn with just enough exaggeration to enhance the emotion and drama of the story or veer into uncanny valley territory. You get a very heightened sense of emotion in the quiet moments and the momentum of the action scenes are enhanced very well. Granted, the artwork isn’t perfect, some of the pages place too much of a focus on close ups of the characters which can make the action a bit hard to follow and there are some places where the art feels a bit rushed and the characters look a bit off, but these moments are few and far between and shouldn’t be too distracting for the reader.

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Katrina Mae Hao’s colors also deserve special mention for “The Crow: Lethe” #2 for enhancing and adding to the story. The story jumps back and forth between action in the real world, Narco’s memories, and a very distinct hallucination scene where Narco learns about why he’s alive and who is chasing him. Hao’s colors do a great job of separating each part of the story, opting for heavily saturated colors for the real world, faded water colors for the memories, and harsh black and white for the hallucination. It’s a great artistic choice and a good lesson on how to use colors to make the story better.

“The Crow: Lethe” #2 is an interesting departure from the original source material, but a welcome one. While there are some script and art choices that make the book a tiny bit hard to follow in some places, it’s still a well written and well drawn story that does what any good sequel should do and add to the original source material. This is a good middle issue that promises to deliver some interesting moments later down the road.

Final Verdict: 8.7- Fans of the original comic will enjoy the expanded lore while newcomers will enjoy a well written and well drawn story about loss, vengeance, and protecting the people you love.


Matthew Blair

Matthew Blair hails from Portland, Oregon by way of Attleboro, Massachusetts. He loves everything comic related, and will talk about it for hours if asked. He also writes a web comic about a family of super villains which can be found here: https://tapas.io/series/The-Secret-Lives-of-Villains

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