Tales From Harrow County: Lost Ones #1, from Dark Horse, is a return to the gothic horror series.
Writer Cullen Bunn deposits the reader into a large grey city, with people scurrying home before dark. There is fear. Get home before bad things happen. A waitress, Emmy, serves coffee to a lone stranger in a diner, but her closing up routine is interrupted by a well-dressed gentleman who seems to recognize her.
And from there, Bunn’s tangled web is weaving, knitting threads of logic and plot and horror. The horror is implied, demonstrated, and personified. The horror, the lights, and darks, the cloudy and bright moments are finely stitched, with obvious care.
The art by Emily Schnall is made of heavy brush lines, not fine gossamer wisps of suggestion. The people have generous features, with plenty of simplified big shapes all around. It suggests early New Yorker cartoons, this urban thick line treatment. But the horror. Big horrific scenes, with dark shadows and sinister shading. Lettering is by Tyler Crook, who keeps it clean and precise. Ah, the better to peek around and enjoy the grisly goings-on.
Go on, pick up a copy!
Dark Horse, Tales From Harrow County: Lost Ones #1, $3.99 for 25 pages of content