The Crow: Hark the Herald #1

The Crow has a new vessel of vengeance in this holiday themed one shot from Dark Horse. 

Every year, six of the most deadly assassins in the business take a week off from their dehumanizing profession to come together as a family. Celebrating Christmas, the killers hunker down in a cabin and play cards, sing carols and exchange gifts. 

Last year, one of the killers decided to take a pair of innocent lives. Now exactly 1 year later, one of the innocents has been resurrected by a crow to revenge their murder and the death of a loved one. 

This is not a holiday special for those who like their Christmases sweet and happy. Hark the Herald is gritty and violent. There's no punches pulled here! But if you know what your in for; then you are going to love this festive take on The Crow. 

Hack/Slash's Tim Seeley crafts a Crow story that actually answers some long standing questions that I've had about the franchise since I was first introduced to it way back in 1996. I'm not sure why the character of Eric isn't used here. But I can completely understand why the crow has chosen a replacement.

Filled with a ton of violence, this is not an easy read. But it was definitely a great entry for those who need their holidays to be a little more R-rated for a change.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

A Caliber Christmas #1

Finding this 1989 Christmas special was quite the coup. This black

and white one-shot from the pretty much defunct Caliber Comics

featured a story starring punk-goth superhero, The Crow. Anything

starring this character is quite collectible (I.E. rare) and thus quite

expensive. 

A Caliber Christmas books for $75 and that's not graded! Yet I happened to find a

very good condition issue for only $1! That's a potential profit of 7500%,

if I wanted to sell it. And that was a very big IF...

One of my key collections in my comic book collection is my holiday comics. Be

it Halloween, Christmas or Arbor Day. If it's a book of sequential art about a

special time of year- I WANT IT! Clearly, if I needed to sell off some of my

collection,my holiday books would be one of the last things I would sell.

But $75 can buy more comic books! I really needed to know if this book was

worth keeping or not. 

There's about a dozen stories in this giant sized special. With the exception of

the Crow, the other vignettes are of franchises and/or characters that I am not at

all familiar with at all. Though you might not know anything about these figures,

all of the stories are clearly set during Christmastime. For example, with the

Baker Street tale, you'll see what it's like to celebrate the holidays with the

homeless and less fortunate. Ironically, I thought that the story starring Crow

was the weakest of this entire bunch.

One thing that surprised me about this comic book was how religious it was.

Most Christmas specials these days tend to stay away from Christianity; to

the point of not even using the word 'Christmas' in the title! But at least 2

stories talk positively about Christ. Plus there was one very intriguing story

set in what is called the Aniverse, was a brilliant anthropomorphic allegory

of the Christmas Story. 

But you are quickly reminded at points that this is a typical comic book.

There's a very cheesecake pin-up in the center of the book. And that back

page splash between a cat(?) and one of Santa's reindeer was pretty risque.

And that gory but very twisty Deadworld story! Wow! I actually want to find

more from this series!

Begrudgingly, I must say that I loved this book. I guess I'm going to have to

find my $75 elsewhere. Because when it comes to A Caliber Christmas:

It's a keeper!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.