Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Harrow County Volume Four: Family Tree

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Harrow County Volume Four: Family Tree



    Harrow County Volume Four: Family Tree
    Released by: Dark Horse Comics
    Released on: January 25th, 2017.
    Written by: Cullen Bunn
    Illustrated by: Tyler Crook
    Purchase From Amazon

    Clinton runs through a cornfield - like the town itself, rumored to sit on tainted ground. He hears someone whistling and tries to found out who it is, where they are, but it's tough to see over the stalks. Is it one of the scarecrows? He's not sticking around to find out. He runs as fast as he can to try and find his way back home.

    Bernice is out there looking for him when Emmy shows up behind her. She's had her familiar, the skinless boy, keeping tabs on her - really just out of concern. Emmy clearly considers Bernice a friend, but Bernice isn't really happy about it. Regardless, since Emmy is there, she might as well help find Clinton. He hasn't been seen by anyone since he ran out of Sunday School this afternoon. And so the two girls head out into the cornfield, which Emmy notes is owned by 'Old Man Chabon.'

    As they make their way deeper into the cornfield they come across some bloody footprints, and then the rustling starts - they're surrounded, the scarecrows seem to be moving in on them. Emmy orders them to get back, but they're not listening to her, her powers don't seem to work on them. The familiar fights back, but it's not enough… until Bernice throws a handful of corn from a white bag she's been carrying into the air and seemingly summons a murder of crows descends immediately and takes care of the problem. Emmy, unaware of Bernice's recent connection to Lovey, has questions, but now is not the time for this talk. They need to find Clinton. And then they find more bloody footprints…

    When issue #14 begins, we learn about Emmy's mother. She doesn't remember her very well, or the night that she left home. We see her wrestle with what she feels she needs to do, Emmy, an infant, lies in her crib while her mother drops the knife to the floor. The woman apologizes to the baby she knows won't understand her. She wanted to believe she could do this, raise her as her own, but she knows the truth and she can't do it. As Isaac, Emmy's pa, slept that night, Emmy's mother ran away… never to be seen again.

    But in the present day, Emmy and Bernice are still in the cornfield - they've found Clinton, he's being held captive in a sense by a strange man who seems to have powers that rival or even surpass Emmy's own abilities. The girls, and Emmy's skinless familiar, see footprints but no body. The man tells the girls that it's Mildred, and that when Mildred goes a wandering, bad things happen. The man lets Clinton go, Emmy tells Bernice to take him home and has her familiar follow them just in case.

    And then she talks to this man, who tells her he's named Levi. He tells Emmy that he and Mildred are her family, that he's a psychopomp and that for that reason he knows a lot more about her than she realizes. His job is to lead the dead to the afterlife. She follows him through the field and they wind up at a massive plantation that Emmy knows shouldn't be there. Levi tells her once their meeting is done, it'll go away again. Emmy heads inside and feels no danger, even feeling a kinship to a woman she sees in a painting, a woman whose face has been covered over.

    And then Levin introduces Emmy to 'our kin' - Willa, Mildred, Caine, Corbin and Odessa. They tell Emmy 'you're one of us' and tell her that they want to help her.

    Issue #15 starts off with a sequence that shows us how Hester 'took it upon herself to become a god.' When she was kicked out of town she created companions out of mud and blood. There were those, like Odessa, who took issue with this - but there was nothing they could do to stop her. This is what Odessa tells Emmy as they walk through the woods together.

    Emmy's starting to figure things out on her own - she thinks that she's Hester, returned from the grave in a sense. And Odessa tells her that's pretty close to the truth, but that Emmy doesn't have to do things the way that Hester did, but Emmy doesn't really know Odessa or the other members of this 'family' at all. She raises this point, and Odessa tells her of their traditions, how they don't stay together but wander the world individually, in their own way - though they do come from the same place. Once every decade they'll have a conclave, they'll all gather at the house that has always been there, no matter where it might be. And one of the conclaves is happening now, which is where Emmy comes in.

    Odessa tells Emmy about the different members of the family, her brothers and sisters as she puts it, of herself, Levi, Mildred, Willa, Kaine, Corbin and Hester's own tutor, Amaryllis. And then she tells her how Hester coveted Amaryllis' powers, killed her and then ate her to absorb them, claim them for her own, breaking their one core rule for the first time. This is why Hester was banished. Emmy wants to know more about both her past and her present. Odessa and the others will take her in and show her, but there are strings attached…


    The Meeting Lodge only 'exists' in the human world during the conclave, it's supposed to be sanctuary for otherworldly beings, the kind that are trying to convince Emmy to go all in with them. Emmy gets a bad vibe from the place.

    When the issue opens up, she's telling her 'family' that she won't let them hurt the good people that live in Harrow County, the place she's spent most of her days, the place that she has, until now, called home. They tell her that's a shame, given that so many of those supposedly good people are nothing more than some of Hester Beck's creations, and therefore not even really human at all. Best to kill them all and raze the land.

    They intend to clean up Hester's mess, whether Emmy is in on this or not. They leave Emmy in the house to go off and do the 'Devil's business' and when she tries to follow them, she finds that exiting the lodge doesn't land her in Harrow County, but in something the others all the Waste. She's a prisoner now, at least temporarily, stuck here with Odessa. And while she's trapped in the lodge, her 'family' spread out across Harrow County to sever her ties to the community - ties to those that are human and inhuman alike. It doesn't go as planned for them, but neither do things play out the way Emmy expects them to, especially when that boy with no skin decides to get protective…the darkness can be overwhelming, but sometimes if you don't fear the shadows, you'll feel warmth.

    This issue would seem to bring to a close the storyline involving the 'family' that tries to indoctrinate Emmy into their ranks but of course, we don't really know where things are going from here, so that could be way off base. For now, however, it seems like there's some closure to Emmy's current plight and that things just might be set back to normal, whatever normal is in Harrow County. Bunn's story takes things in a somewhat expected direction, which is unusual given how many times this series has been able to pull the rug out from under us, but it seems fitting, the way it finishes up. Sometimes things do play out the way you figure they will and sometimes that's for a reason that will mean more later on down the road.

    Tyler Crook's artwork is still great sixteen issues later. He's beautifully colored style brings life to the interesting cast of characters conjured up by Bunn's scripts, but for every page that looks quaint and wholesome, there's another page where great evil is portrayed in typically unsettling fashion. The visual contrast that he employs in this book is a big part of what makes it so compelling as we see some seriously sinister deeds play out against such a seemingly innocent, all-American backdrop. It probably seems like we gush about this book every time a new issue comes out, but that's only because it's so damn good.

    In addition to reprinting issues thirteen through sixteen of Harrow County this collected fourth volume also includes a nice selection of Harrow County sketchbook pages featuring rough art and notes from Tyler Crook. We also get the full script for issue fifteen along with Crook's rough layouts - approximately fifty pages of 'bonus material' for those who appreciate seeing the creative process at work!







      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    Working...
    X