ABaHB Traditional Year End Review

Another year has come and gone and we, as usual, want to thank you for hanging in there with us. For the most part, 2002 was a quiet year for The Crow. For a change, Crow products dominated the scenery with a lot of new items coming out for fans through NECA & Dynamic Forces. That is a good thing for the fan out there that can't get enough of the merchandise side of The Crow. But for those wanting new stories of substance, this was a disappointing year.

On the horizon, things look to be very much different in 2003. Here is our annual run down on projects:

Movies - Crow 4, Wicked Prayer, continues to move forward. We should be hearing some official news soon. I cannot go into much detail about it, but let me just say that I am VERY excited about the prospects of this movie. I think once more information is allowed to come out about it, a swell of anticipation will start fan base wide in regard to Wicked Prayer. The big news on Crow 4 this past year was the official end to all the rumors that Lazarus was still going to be the next Crow film. This film has become its own entity and will be made totally separate from the Crow franchise. To read up on all the information on Wicked Prayer and Lazarus, check out our highly detailed sections on both films.

Comics - The collapse of CHAOS! couldn't have come at a worse time for fans. Hungry for new projects, the cancellation of the crossover Lady Death/Crow comic due to financial troubles at CHAOS! was very disappointing. However, the Crow in comics is not dead yet and hopefully soon we will be able to report on some projects in the works. Some good news though, the original graphic novel was reprinted this year and sold out the first printing, second printing soon to come out. The reprinted graphic novel came with a new cover, with the original cover being moved to being the back cover.

Merchandise - As I stated earlier, this has been a good year for the merchandise conscious Crow fan. Coming up in 2003, there are some items that will be major hits with fans. One of those is a trading card set coming out from Dynamic Forces that was mentioned in their press release earlier in the year. The card set was scheduled for a 2002 release but should be out sometime in early to mid 2003. There should be some great things to go a long with that set, so keep your eyes and ears open here for more information as it is made available.

Animated Crow - This is still an ongoing project for Kevin Eastman's group. There have been various rumors about this project. At this time, it continues to move forward. It will more than likely be a one-shot project, not an ongoing series. Hopefully 2003 will bring more information about this long awaited project.

Novels - There are no new novels planned at this time. There may be some reissues of previous novels, but other than that, no new stories. There could be something done as a tie-in with Crow 4, but at this time, nothing concrete to grab hold of.

James O'Barr - James continues to hit the convention circuit, not much in the way of new stories. His long in the works follow up to the original Crow comics continues to move along slowly. He recently spoke with CrowFanClub about the long in the works author's edition of the original Crow comics. It will have 60 new pages, 2 restored scenes along with lost and new pages. No time given when we will see it, but sounds like 2003 could be the year. James has been active creating prints based on The Crow and other works, having drawn a lot of them for fans at convention visits. No update on Gothik, the long awaited, non-Crow project from O'Barr. The site jamesobarr.com was launched this year. After a promising start, it has lost a lot of steam. It mostly serves as a place where you can see a list of all the work he has done, find out where he is appearing and purchase some hard to find items. It no longer has a venue to get updates on what he is doing outside of convention appearances, nor the monthly Q&A that originally had been a part of it. The place to get up to date information on James is CrowFanClub.

Speaking of CrowFanClub, it was revamped this year and is under a new Webmaster. It has become a Mecca for James and Crow products. You should visit there if you haven't been by in a while.

Crow Fan Fiction - Along with being the place for Crow news and information, this year marked our further involvement in the fan fiction arena. We became the owners of the huge catalog of fan fiction works that were housed at the crowfanfiction.com site ran by White Rabbit. Coupled with our already large fan fiction archive, this section boasts one of the most impressive and eclectic mixes of Crow fan fiction found on the net. If you have not had an opportunity to check it out, by all means, do so.

Misc - We had some good news this year in regard to a Crow alum. Walter Goggins, who portrayed officer Stan Robbers in The Crow: Salvation, won an Oscar, along with two other people in the short film category. Croween 2k2 proved to be the biggest Croween to date with close to 80 submissions. The winner will be announced during the week of 23 Dec 2002. The list goes on in regard to highlights from this year. I highly recommend you skim through our archive section for 2002 to catch up on everything we reported.

Again, we appreciate everyone who has visited ABaHB this year and our long time partners. We look forward to a promising 2003. May your families be blessed this holiday season and take care.

Irony Despair & LLcruize