well, I hate to break it to everyone, but the back cover to Deadworld #10 is NOT the very first printed appearance of The Crow.
It may be the first appearance on a comic, but not the first printed appearance ever.
Caliber printed an advertisement circular that they distributed to local comic shops in the Michigan area called Caliber Rounds. I used to get them from Gary Reed directly when I would visit the Caliber offices to turn in my inks for The Realm.
This is actually the very first printed appearance of The Crow.
These advertisement papers were published in July or August of 1988.
Higher resolution scans are available if anyone wants them.
I don't think many people have any copies of these at all and if they do, they don't show them off . I have never seen any other copies of these anywhere and I talked with Gary Reed (publisher of Caliber Press) just this past weekend and he told me that he doesn't even have any copies of these for his archives, so I loaned them to him to scan.
Even though this is not the actual comic, wouldn't this still be considered the actual first printed appearance of The Crow?
These wouldn't hold any value because they aren't printed in "comic form"?
Just curious about this as I found these after digging through boxes of old stuff in preparation for a trade paperback collection of a Arrow Comics project of mine.
Looking forward to hearing thoughts on this!
Best,
Jason Moore