While discussing his current Crow project with Comic Book Resources, creator James O'Barr turned to his upcoming miniseries, which is based on a rejected screenplay for the sequel to 1994 Brandon Lee film. While that original script didn't fly, the artist contends he saw many of its elements reflected in another movie that came along about a decade later: Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.

"It was obvious they were gonna do another sequel, even though that was the last thing I wanted because I felt, that was Brandon Lee's legacy. Just leave it alone," O'Barr told CBR. "But when they insisted on making another Crow film, I thought, let me try something and take it in a completely different direction. This was like '94, I think. Or early '95. So I wrote a treatment about a woman that gets killed at her wedding and then comes back. They paid me for it, but they said, 'This is useless to us -- no one's gonna go for a female Crow. There just isn't a market for that.' So they essentially just shelved it.

"Astonishingly enough, [Laughs] six years later, Kill Bill comes out from the same movie company [Miramax Films]," he continued. "I don't want to say it's the exact same story, because I didn't have any of that kung fu nonsense in there, but the stories are so similar that I can't believe Tarantino or one of his assistants didn't see it or read it."

O'Barr said that for the comic, called The Engines of Despair, "I purposefully steered it away from anything that would point towards Kill Bill. And I also plan on running a disclaimer saying, 'Look: this was written six years before Kill Bill, and here's some of the artwork I did to prove it. Not that I don't think Kill Bill is a phenomenal movie. It's just I don't want anyone thinking I cribbed anything from [Tarantino].