With The Crow: Death & Rebirth #4, the series is fast approaching its conclusion and the vengeful spirit that is all that is left of Jamie Osterberg is closing in on his target. Here’s the official description from IDW:

As the shuddering climax of The Crow: Death & Rebirth draws near, the ghost of Jamie’s friend Toko descends into the spiritual World Below of Japanese tradition, and discovers that while Haruko’s body walks the mortal world, her soul is trapped in the afterlife, destined to be consumed by a powerful demon… unless it can be rescued in time. Cold rage overflows the vengeful spirit of The Crow, as he penetrates the shadows of Tokyo in diminishing hopes of saving his soulmate…

As with the last few issues, The Crow attacks one of Biotrope’s lairs, where he easily dispatches the  various thugs. This time around, however, John Shirley has added something new to the mix, an opponent that should prove to be a challenge even for the seemingly unstoppable Crow. While this isn’t the most original development, it does inject the book with some much needed conflict, and although we won’t see that big showdown until the final issue, but the buildup is still pretty satisfying. The increasing presence of magic is also interesting, but too often spirits and demons crop up with little explanation, the attitude of the story apparently being “Hey, it’s magic, anything can happen!”

The seemingly arbitrary addition of plot elements (such as one of the mercenary sentries casually wandering off to have sex with Hendra) is confusing, and Kevin Colden’s art doesn’t help in that regard. Colden is a master in the atmospheric use of inks and negative space and most of his panels are very striking, individually. The problem lies in stringing them together to tell a story, with the impressionist aspect of the work muddying the narrative. The characters’ lack of expression doesn’t help either: being dead, it makes sense that the Crow wouldn’t be too expressive, but his constant quipping undermines that argument. The other characters are slightly more expressive, but only in moments of extreme emotion. On a positive note, Colden creates some awesome looking spirits (the ones with animal heads are particularly cool and unnerving) and I wish we got to see more of them.

While The Crow: Death & Rebirth still has more than it’s share of problems, it has some good qualities as well, and an excellent lead-in to the final issue, with the prospect of a real fight for our anti-hero.

3/5