CCC09: James O'Barr
Caleb Goellner wrote:Just a few minutes after 4 p.m. a thin man in an orange shirt and baseball cap wandered into a room of roughly 50 fans. Panning from one side of the room to the other on his way to the panel stage, he asked "Are you all here to see me?
The man was James O'Barr, the 49-year-old creator of "The Crow," a black and white comic book series originally published in 1989, followed by a film starring the late Brandon Lee in 1994. Despite numerous sequels and a television series adapted from the film, the franchise has been surrounded by as much tragedy as success, with the comic book originally created by O'Barr to deal with the loss of his fiancé who was killed by a drunk driver, and Brandon Lee dying in a bizarre shooting accident while filming "The Crow."
The panel, moderated by Wizard's Stephen Wettstein, focused on O'Barr's career in comics and the life experiences that shaped his work, which include several years in the military and many decades working on cars.