Resurrection

The Crow: Midnight Legends #5

by Jon J. Muth, Jamie Tolagson (Illustrations), Tommy Lee Edwards (Illustrations)

Eric Draven returns as The Crow. Volume 5 reprints the Image Comics series issues #1-4, including the stories "Resurrection," "Shadows," "Death," and "The Line Between The Devil's Teeth." Written by Jon J. Muth with art by Jamie Tolagson and Tommy Lee Edwards.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

104 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 2012

About the author

Jon J. Muth is an American comic artist. His works include J. M. DeMatteis' graphic novel Moonshadow, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake (along with Michael Zulli, Charles Vess), Mike Carey's Lucifer: Nirvana and Swamp Thing: Roots. Muth has gone on to an award-winning career as a children's book writer and illustrator. He received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for his illustrations in Come On, Rain! by Karen Hesse.

He has also created a version of the Stone soup fable set in China.

Reviews

[Quentin Wallace]

This is basically just a retelling of the original Crow series with some more background information on the various characters added. It's okay, but really the original series was something special and not something that really needed to be redone. The book is wordy which detracts from the moody art somewhat.

If you're a Crow completist you'd probably enjoy seeing a different take on things, otherwise I'd say just read the original Crow series by James O'Barr.

[Mathieu Robichaud]

Elaborate retelling of the original story.

[A.L. Bellettiere]

The Crow Midnight Legends Vol.'s 5 &6 reprints the ten issue run of Image Comics 'The Crow', originally released in 1999. Much like the show that ended the same year,The Crow Stairway To Heaven,this is Jon Muth's reinterpretation of James O'Barr's loved graphic novel, The Crow. Throughout the book, it's heavy on it's connection/homage to the first movie. Much like how J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek was a reinvention and perhaps like you saw the Original Series with different shades of glasses, this feels much like that. The more I read, I'm starting to like it a little more than STH. It shares equal amounts of violence and characteristics of the movie and GN. It is a little weird to see scenes seen differently, characters that don't always resemble ones you know. But...you get used to it. The new angle introduced here is that Gideon is the cops informant. And unlike the movie, Gideon IS killed, leaving the cops with looking for other ways to pin down Top Dollar for the crimes he’s committing. Which is also what happens at the end of this part 1(compilation of the first half of the crow series). And as much as the man tells Eric that they’re trying to use whatever evidence to get Top, one almost doesn’t care. It is Albrecht,however, that tells Eric that. More or less, the movie, compressed down, is all of part 1. Unfortunately, like STH, they throw in other characters that seem to be very throwaway.What I can understand, I don’t mind at all but it’s what I can’t understand or follow that bothers me. And this is after 3-4 times going back through it.


I laugh that my perspective on this has changed or flipped. I can accept and enjoy The Crow Stairway to Heaven for what this is but why,oh why did they do this? Maybe it has something to do with the rights? Regardless, the accompanying art does not help and throwing in that Skank might have been a pedo does not help. Either change to another characters perspective or leave it alone.