James O' Barr
James O' Barr was born in 1960 in Detroit. His early childhood is not a time he looks back on with any nostalgia. He was raised in orphanages and foster care until he was 7.
As a child James was an avid reader, he had a difficult time communicating with other people so James worked on other skills, writing and drawing. In his early teens, James claims that his drawing style was inspired by an unlikely artist, Michaelangelo. James also admires Vaughn Bode, which James had met him at a comic book convention when he was 14. James met other artists, whose reaction was not only negative, but expressed in a manner which is even today a hurtful memory to the sensitive O'Barr. James O' Barr admits The Crow is directly autobiographical. The story is based on his own tragic, youthful romance, and just like the comic version he was to create, the real story started out very happily.
When James was 16 he met a girl and she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Up until that point James explained that his life felt like an endurance test. And James had felt that he got to the end of it. James was sure good things were finally going to start happening to him. James was with his girl for 3 years, and they were engaged and to get married whey they both graduated, and she was James's whole world.
A couple of weeks before her 18th birthday, she was killed by a drunk driver. James was filled with anger and frustration, he carried the pain around for a couple of years, James explains that it was like poison in his body. The only way James could work the tragedy out of his system was to draw and write about it, to try to work out all that anger and frustration and bitterness and anger towards god, Yes, God was responsible. Like many young men who cannot see a clear path ahead of them, shortly after James's fiancee was killed, he joined the military. And basically this is when he came up with the idea for The Crow.
|
