CROW PRINCESS #1

No, Not Eric Draven

By Kurt Amacker     March 24, 2006

When Lynette gives birth to Cora, the doctors assure her that her daughter is stillborn. When she cries over the dead infant, her tears magically revive the girl. But, Lynette suddenly swears the child isn't hers. Though the doctors can find nothing wrong with the baby, the young mother remains unconvinced. Thus, Cora's life begins in tragedy and continues thusly through her teenage years. Despite her intelligence and beauty, she seems incapable of making friends. Lynette continues to reject her, while she suffers the merciless ridicule of her classmates. She only finds solace in crows. Only the flocks of black birds seem to understand her, and her classmates call her the Crow Princess. Cora embraces the name, believing her connection to the birds runs deeper than anyone knows. When she experiences recurring dreams of a friend she's never met -- a human friend -- she learns that she may not be as human as she thought.

Nabors has written an enchanting modern fairy tale that pinches a nerve of anyone that found themselves the object of so much ridicule as children. If Nabors accomplishes anything, she unflinchingly portrays the abject cruelty of children. When Cora befriends a rat, her classmates kill it in front of her. When they see her love of crows, they kill one and serve it to her on a lunch tray. Through Cora, Nabors fulfills the wish of every belittled child that ever just wanted to escape the circumstances forced upon them. She never second guesses Cora's experience and makes the reader wonder whether her ordeal is merely a fantasy. Cora has found magic, and it's real. For adult readers, it brings a bittersweet recollection of a time when you would've done anything to escape to someplace magic.

Though Nabors is American, she drew CROW PRINCESS in Japanese Manga style, though it reads left-to-right. Most COMICSCAPE readers know I'm not a huge Manga fan. Unfortunately, the art in CROW PRINCESS hasn't changed my mind or anything. But, it also means I'm probably not the best judge of the style. Some of the art is excessively stylized -- big eyes, big mouths, and the like. But overall, Nabors provides enough sublime moments that I wasn't completely thrown off. Manga's just not my thing.

CROW PRINCESS is worth your time. This is the kind of book I'd give someone that wants comics without superheroes. It's a one-shot graphic novel, so there's no further issues to look for yet. You can order it at Rachel Nabors's web site.

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