Harrow County Omnibus vol. 1
I’ve read a lot of Cullen Bunn’s comic book writing over the years. Some of it good, some of it bad, and some that I can just feel indifferent towards. Tyler Crook, on the other hand, is someone who has always delivered enjoyably creepy art and acquitted himself well when he took over from Guy Davis on “B.P.R.D.” He departed that series to do Harrow County with Bunn, and it’s a series that has always been on my radar. Even if the buzz surrounding it has been too quiet to convince me that picking up collected editions of the series with four issues each isn’t worth my money. That’s changed with this omnibus edition, which collects the first four volumes/sixteen issues, and now I can finally see what I’ve been missing out on.
“Harrow County” is the story of Emmy, who has lived in the titular area all of her life. It would be your average county in the southern mideast if it weren’t for its history with a certain witch. Hester Beck worked as a healer in the forested outskirts and the townspeople were content to overlook her… eccentricities to reap the benefits of her presence. At least they were until they found out how Hester came by her powers. Then they hung her from a tree, and set her on fire when the hanging didn’t take.
What does this have to do with Emmy? When Hester was burning alive, she swore to the townspeople that she’d be back. As Emmy is about to turn eighteen, she’s showing some of the same powers that Hester did. Now it’s up to her father and everyone else to figure out what to do with the young woman. Which is something that they’d better decide quick, because there are haints in the forest who remember Hester and may be pretty amenable to her second coming.
That’s basically the story of the first volume, “Countless Haints.” You could also call it “The One Where Emmy Realizes she is a Witch and is Almost Killed by the Townsfolk in a Big Misunderstanding.” It’s followed by “Twice Told,” or “The One Where Emmy Finds out She has a Twin Sister From the City Who is Evil.” “Snake Doctor” or “The Volume Where we get a Couple of One-and-Two-Part Stories to Flesh Out the County,” comes after tha and, “Family Tree” — “Wherein Emmy Finds Out She Is Part Of a Larger Magical Society Made up of Jerks,” rounds out the volume.
As you can probably guess by the alternate titles I assigned to each volume, I thought the storytelling in “Harrow County” was a bit on the predictable side. Nearly every volume introduces a familiar storytelling element at its start and then proceeds to do nothing interesting with it. Each major arc, along with the short stories, plays out exactly as you’d expect with no major twists to them. It’s not that Bunn tells these stories badly, it’s just that it feels like he’s expecting the setting and time period (Early 20th Century) to distinguish these tales.
From a certain perspective, these elements do just that. Except that they do it by giving Crook a unique period to draw from for his art. The artist is good at making the story feel like it’s from the era while giving Harrow County itself a comfortable yet sinister vibe to it. While it may look like a cozy town to kick back in for a while, there’s always the chance you’ll wander off the beaten path for a bit and follow a bloody trail into a briar patch. Where you’ll find the whole skin of a boy.
Crook’s work on “B.P.R.D.” showed that he’s very capable of drawing monsters and supernatural creatures. He gets to flex those skills here with the many haints he’s asked to draw and we get some memorable visuals as a result. Between this and the artist’s generally solid storytelling, the end result is that “Harrow County” is never uninteresting too look at and the visuals wind up being the strongest part of the omnibus. Credit is also due to guest artists Carla Speed McNeil and Hannah Lavender, who bring their own distinctive styles to the issues that they get to illustrate here.
It’s just too bad that the storytelling isn’t as interesting as the visuals. Crook’s work is very solid, but it doesn’t elevate Bunn’s generally bland writing to the level which would convince me that I need to pick up the second omnibus which came out recently. I don’t think that “Harrow County” was actively bad, and my gut tells me that this may be better enjoyed by younger, less jaded readers than I. Even if the story will be concluded in that second omnibus, vol. 1 left me with the feeling that I should just cut my losses now.