3 out of 5

Ya done took it too far too soon, Cullen.

Tyler Crook’s art and colors: still goddamn amazing.  If anything, now that our tone in arc one is established, it opens the creators up to space things out during plenty of daytime scenes, where watercolor blues and greys create this wonderful blend of gorgeousness and sickliness.  Keith Wood’s design: consistently perfect.  The gist of the full-bleed opening pages and back cover snapshot has been established, but still, it doesn’t feel established in that it’s not rote or lazy.  Each issue looks freshly inspired.  The backmatter: a little better.  We lost Owen Gieni on the “Tales” bits, gaining Ma’at Crook (now understood to be Tyler’s significant other) and Simon Roy; the stories’ randomness feels a bit more in place now that the main plot can spread out, and opening up the vignettes to the readers has similarly sort of opened the doors, the community properly led in by the tone set by Bunn’s relations (as in: what he’s related) in the first issues.  So that was a good plan.

But: the arc, following up on Emmy’s twin sister coming to town, goes sort of all or nothing on us.  Sixth Gun did this too, the storyline peaking really quickly, undermining the impact.  Bunn had many arcs thereafter to smooth things out, and Harrow is such an interesting world that I’m sure / I hope the same gets to happen here, but nonetheless – it’s what goes down in these issues.  Too many creepos, too sudden of a good / evil clash.  The last issue functions like the chase at the end of a DTV thriller: it’s all telegraphed evil grins and cackling and then some requisite action that ends in something of a cheap deus ex machina.  Again – I have faith we’re onto something good here, and there’s the possibility that Bunn is sweeping some bits under the rug now so that they can be properly woven in later.  Alas and alack, we don’t have that retrospect yet, so the issues read as much more conventional – still entertaining, but conventional – than issues 1 – 4.