And so begins the journey of Eric Draven (Dacascos), a rising rock star who is murdered along with his true love, Shelly (Karsenti), on the day of their commitment ceremony. Back from the dead one year after his murder and uncertain what's happened to him, Eric searches for answers and revenge in the five-disc DVD set The Crow: Stairway to Heaven�The Complete Series. The DVD set includes all 22 episodes of the first and only season of the series, along with audio commentary by star Mark Dacascos and executive producer Bryce Zabel, a gag reel, original dailies from three episodes, all 22 episode scripts and more.

The series opens with "The Soul Can't Rest," which introduces us to Eric, who literally seems to drop from heaven into the mud during a Day the Dead celebration. Haunted by memories of his life with Shelly and of their deaths, Eric hunts down his killers, dealing out his own brand of justice. And in "Souled Out," Eric discovers who ordered his death�as well as what happens when someone who is evil returns from the dead.

As the series settles in, Eric is drawn to helping people in hopes of gaining redemption and getting back to Shelly, who is waiting for him in the Land of the Dead. However, in "Give Me Death" Eric finds himself in a deadly confrontation with Top Dollar, one of his killers, which sets him back and appears to close the portal and his connection to Shelly. And in "The People vs. Eric Draven," Eric is put on trial for Shelly's murder, setting off events that take the series to dark places.

In the last half of the season, Eric discovers a secret society of powerful men who are interested in the Crow's powers in "Lazarus Rising." And in the final episode, "A Gathering Storm," the leader of the Lazarus Group figures out how to separate Eric from the Crow, leading Eric into a confrontation with the most dangerous part of himself.

Stylish but lacking

In 1998, four years after the violent and stylish revenge flick The Crow, the material was remade into the series The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. Many of the characters remained, but executive producer Bryce Zabel realized a series based only on revenge wouldn't work. So he reinvented the Crow legend and made the series about redemption. And to some extent it worked.

There's no denying that the mythology doesn't make any sense at all. Why send a restless soul back to earth with all these mystical and kick-butt martial-arts superpowers and then not let him kill the bad guys? And what the heck does Eric need redemption for? But we embrace vampires, werewolves, zombies and other mystic creatures, so it's not fair to give The Crow a hard time just because of a silly backstory.

The series had decent actors at its core, especially Mark Dacascos as Eric/The Crow, Marc Gomes as detective Darryl Albrecht and MVP Katie Stuart as the 13-year-old streetwise Sarah. And Zabel wasn't afraid to take his characters to dark places. If anything, the series got a bit too dark for a first season. Still, what really set this Crow apart was its strong visual style, something that was borrowed from the first film and was unusual on television at the time.

In the Crow: Stairway to Heaven�The Complete Series DVD set, all 22 episodes are nicely reproduced, and there's an entertaining and informative commentary by Mark Dacascos and Bryce Zabel for the first two episodes. Beyond that, though, the bonus features are strictly standard, without any additional commentaries or featurettes. Yes, there's a fun gag reel, selections from the soundtrack and the original scripts, but the rest of it doesn't add up to much.

While it's nice to see this series come out on DVD, most of the bonus features seem like an afterthought, as in "What the heck can we put on the DVD that won't cost us anything extra?" It's unfortunate, especially since the series ended leaving fans wanting more.