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Harrow County Volume Three: Snake Doctor

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    Ian Jane
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  • Harrow County Volume Three: Snake Doctor



    Harrow County Volume Three: Snake Doctor
    Released by: Dark Horse Comics
    Released on: September 14th, 2016.
    Written by: Cullen Bunn
    Illustrated by: Carla Speed McNeil, Tyler Crook, Hannah Christenen
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    Harrow County Volume Three: Snake Doctor collects issues nine through thirteen of the Dark Horse Comics series. Artist Carla Speed McNeil takes up her pencil for a guest spot on the ninth issue of Harrow County and Hannah Christensen handles pencils for issue twelve. The series had been illustrated up to this point by Tyler Crook (who handles lettering duties on this issue and full art chores on issues ten and eleven) and remains written by Cullen Bunn. If you're not caught up, well, that's on you - but you should be, because this is hands down one of the best horror comics, no, one of the best comics period, on the racks right now.

    When this latest issue begins, a train barrels down its tracks, those in the engine room unaware that there are some unusual stowaways aboard. One of them hops off as the train slows around a corner, and is on his way, his pack over his shoulder and a smile on his face. He's hungry but somehow manages to catch a bird in his bare hands, which takes care of that issue - no need to cook it, raw will do just fine. But wait… is it hunger? Probably not, as he turns the bird's corpse into a harmonica.

    Under the porch of the farmhouse that Emmy shares with her pa rests the boy with no skin. He hears the music from said harmonica, and knowing that something is amiss he contemplates waking Emmy up from her sleep. Deciding against that, he instead finds his skin, stashed folded neatly in her dresser, swipes it from her room and heads out into the night. He creeps up behind the hobo from the opening scene, but he's busted before he even knows it. The hobo invites the skinless boy to join him in a meal of pig's feet, but the boy declines. Doesn't stop the hobo from chowing down. Seems he was hungry after all. The hobo, however, has got a mouth on him - he asks the boy questions he knows the boy doesn't have answers to, chief amongst those his name. And then he mentions Hester. The witch.

    They head into the woods, the hobo still talking and the boy now quick enough to catch the rabbits he could never catch before, in the same grove that the witch, Emmy, found his skin to begin with. The hobo keeps talking, intent on upsetting the boy, making him relive unpleasant parts of his past, The hobo brings the boy home, to the home he had before he was skinless… when he had a name.

    Well, first things first, Tyler Crook didn't illustrate this issue and his style is soooooo distinctive and soooooo tied into the look and feel of this series that, well, it's hard to imagine anyone else even touching it. So it is to the credit of Carla Speed McNeil that the art in this issue holds its own against what has come before it. Does it look like Crook's art? Nope, not even close. It's a very different style to be sure but it's not at all inappropriate, in fact it works very well. Different is good if it's done right, and this is done right. The same weird sense of super rural locations and settings and style is worked into this issue, as it should be, but it's illustrated with a style that uses heavier lines and maybe a slightly looser penciling style. But again, it looks good, it suits the story and it just has the right vibe.

    As to the story this issue, it's kinda-sorta self contained, but maybe not. We just don't know yet. Obviously with a series like this, a run that builds off of earlier issues in a big way, continuity counts but you can come into this one and still 'get' what's going on. Does that make it a good jumping on point for new readers? Maybe, but it's best to start from the beginning. Bunn's prose is a bit more minimalist here than it in the issues before, it's really just the hobo doing most of the talking in most of the issue, but there's something dark and sinister and ominous about all of this. It's going to go somewhere, and that somewhere may very well be unpleasant.

    A boy named Clinton plays in the woods while his Uncle Early picks blackberries. At first Early wants Clinton's help but when he's pricked by the plant for the first time ever, he seems unsettled and sends the kid on his way. Early does as he's told but then finds a snake only a few feet away. Early investigates, notes that it's a cottonmouth, and tries to kill it with his shovel - it doesn't work. Early gets bitten.

    Emmy and her friend Bernice are walking through the woods. They get to Mason Hollow, say their goodbyes and go their separate ways. As Bernice heads back to her home we learn about the area's origins as a hot spot for 'homemade wine' until that was shut down by the feds. On her way back she passes Early, notes that he doesn't look right and asks Clinton what's going on. It seems Early has been starring down the path that leads into the woods since the incident earlier in the day. Clinton's worried that 'Lady Lovey' might be calling to his uncle - she lives at the end of the path he's staring at so intensely.

    Bernice asks her grandpa about Lovey and we see an incident from his childhood where he was down at the swimming hole when he saw her and the snakes that seemed to answer her. But how could her grandfather have memories when he wasn't born but was in fact born of a stick in the mud by Hester Beck?

    That night Clinton knocks on Bernice's window for help. Early's gone off into the woods in the middle of the night…

    Bernie peers into the window of Lady Lovey's cellar and is shocked by what she sees - hundreds of poisonous snakes in mason jars litter the shelves of the old woman's basement. She sees Early on the floor, likely dead, as Lovey snatches the one serpent off the floor that made its way out of a broken jar.

    Outside, Bernice and Clinton know they shouldn't be seeing this - they're just about to head home and get help when they're accosted by a giant possum. When Clinton screams Lovey hears him, gets distracted, and is bitten by the serpent she's been trying to wrangle. The kids run off into the dark woods. When they light their lantern so they can see where they're going, they come face to face with a tree filled with more possums staring them down. Bernice knows they're 'familiars' and that they're doing a witches bidding.

    Just then, Lovey grabs Bernice and pulls her back to her house. Clinton runs, terrified and sure that Bernice is done for. But when Lovey gets the girl back to her cabin she sees Early standing there, healthy as an ox. Bernice realizes she and Clinton were wrong about Lovey, that the fact she's been bitten is their fault - and Lovey wants Bernice to make it right. Before that happens, Lovey tells Bernice her story, how she wasn't always a recluse and how Hester Beck showed up and put bad thoughts into her friends' minds before she could drive her away and how a woman named Odessa taught her how to use snakes for different purposes and why she wound up their jailer.

    Guest artist Hannah Christenson fills in on this issue. When it begins, Emmy is heading to Creech's Crossing, the rumor of a haunted house to strong a lure to ignore. Emmy knew a lot of people in the neighborhood from her younger days, or so she thought - they don't treat her like they used to when she was a kid. Mrs. Cohen, who used to watch her when she was a kid, isn't too happy to see her, but then there are the kids who, when she see her, say 'You don't look like a witch…'

    The little girl on the porch holding the doll, Gertie, she knows that Emmy keeps that skin in her saddle bag. Word gets around it seems. The girl tells Emmy that the pest in the house comes out at night and hisses at her, threatens to eat her. It's understandable that this would frighten a girl of her age, or any age really. The girl's parents are happy to see her, however. They've been in the place for only two weeks, moving to the area hoping to find work. There's been trouble since the first night, they heard that a witch in the area before Emmy left the spirits, hauntings, and were hoping since that witch is gone, Emmy could set things right.

    Just then, Emmy sees a small boy at the table, saying nothing. She talks to it, but the others can't see it. It's then she realizes this boy is the one doing the haunting and once he's busted, his frustration manifests like never before. Emmy, thinking the boy is angry about her presence, sends the family out of the house but the door is locked. She orders the spirit to leave them alone but it calls for Gertie over and over again - but not only do the spirits want to keep Gertie there, they want to keep Emmy too. After all, according to the ghosts, they were promised…

    This one sort of starts off like Harrow County meets Poltergeist - it has the same sort of vibe that the movie puts off but obviously takes place in the world established by the earlier issues in the series. And then there's the fact that there's no Craig T. Nelson or Zelda Rubenstein anywhere in sight. Bunn's script, however, takes things in interesting directions. What at first seems like a standalone entry in the run is, by the end of the issue, clearly important to the continuity yet to be revealed. You won't see the big reveal coming, but once it hits you, dang!

    Hannah Christenson brings an interesting style to the look of the book that has a bit of a P. Craig Russell influence going on, though that's not a bad thing. Her style is her own to be sure, but the influence is there. Maybe some vintage Ditko too, indicating that this woman has great taste in comic art. It suits the story nicely and once the ghosts really start going to town, she runs with it and the results are impressive.

    The TPB edition also contains artwork from the three artists involved in this edition along with their notes and some notes from Cullen Bunn as well. Also in this section, along with the sketches and notes, are some book plate pieces, rough cover art pieces and penciled pages sans inks and colors. There's a lot of it here, well over twenty-pages' worth. Towards the end of the collection there's a section called Painting Process where we're shown, step by step, how the series is colored.







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