The Crow: Skinning the Wolves concludes its short three issues this month. Although it was original Crow creator James O’Barr‘s return to the character, the series never captured the imagination or the emotions to the extent we hoped it would, and that remains true right to the bitter end of issue three. Here’s the official description from IDW:

With the camp in chaos and bloodshed, the Crow moves in for the final stage of his deadly chess game with the Commandant. Layers of tragedy are peeled away as the mystery of his death and the catalyst of his vengeance are revealed-it is the Endgame, and the Crow will not rest until his mad thirst for retribution is sated…

To get right to the point, StW has been predictable, an assessment that may sound pretty scathing, but really just makes it pretty average (which is another word that has come to be considered much more negative than it should.) Ultimately, the story just fails to excel. Crow stories are generally pretty formulaic (there’s a tragedy, the protagonist dies, protagonist is resurrected to reap bloody vengeance). Wolves eschewed that pattern by starting with the revenge and slowly revealing the tragedy in flashback, but now, when that tragedy is at last exposed, it’s exactly what we thought it would be. O’Barr and Jim Terry never take the opportunity to play with our expectations, even though said opportunity is staring them in the face. The villain, the Nazi Commandant, is also a disappointment. He has, as I mentioned last month, some interesting quirks, but remains a flat, underdeveloped character to the bitter end. Lastly, where this series could easily have been set up as a prequel for all the other Crow stories, or as an origin for the Crow spirit itself, we’re left with no understanding of why this Crow differs from all the others. The only engaging story element comes when the Crow, having killed his killer, admits that he doesn’t feel any better. Still, he moves on in search of other Nazis, in the vain hope that this will bring him peace. With a little more development, this could have spoken to the entire body of Crow work, but instead it feels like a moral tacked on at the end.

The art this issue is significantly more rewarding than the story. O’Barr handles breakdowns, while Terry does details and inks. The action scenes are excellent. O’Barr and Terry imbue the Crow with a whirling violence as he fights Nazis on all sides, often shooting (and hitting) without looking, which is a pretty awesome. One soldier is inexplicably missing his lips, blood gushing, but we can guess at how that may have happened, and it looks great. The faces are a bit odd sometimes, but their emotions are brilliant: rage, terror, and despair all stand out. The haggardness in the faces of the imprisoned Jews is appropriately disturbing. Overall, the art isn’t particularly realistic, but it completely succeeds at capturing the pulpy terror of the story material.

The Crow: Skinning the Wolves’ short run, combined with its inability to stand out make it little more than a footnote for the overall Crow saga. Hopefully O’Barr, Terry, and company can use it as a warm-up for an extended, more dynamic installment in the near future.

3/5