5 out of 5

When I began salivating over James Harren’s art and asking myself if the appeal of his style had any precedents in my existing tastes, I studied the angled, lined, badass form of Howards, the silent but deadly member of Johann’s current troupe, and realized that I was staring at the rebirth of Doug Mahnke.  Whereas Mahnke has excelled with superhero types, though, Harren is much more suited to the sombre forms of the Mignola verse, with both artists’ extremes perfect for tackling whatever artistic insanity comes their way.  And I’m not here to say one dude is better or worse, and I don’t have enough book-to-book comparisons to make any claims, but at least here, paired with Arcudi’s brain-exploding mastery of a billion B.P.R.D. plotlines, twirling meaningful bouts of silence with arguments between spirits and humans with bigger-than-splash-page worthy battle sequences without batting a narrative eye… Harren’s pacing and framing are nothing short of astounding.  I never struggle for where I am in a setting, or feel at a loss for scope – both of which are important in such a globetrotting book with gigantic, Hellish monsters.  And as ‘Flesh and Stone’ jumps from desolated towns to winter landscapes to pastures to cityscapes, Dave Stewart gets to once again prove he knows his shit, and knows how to tailor said shit to his artist.  Harren’s work pulses to life with these colors.

This is not even touching the story itself, which is essentially focused on Johann’s crew clearing out one particularly nasty baddie in a town but meanwhile advances the backgrounds of two of our more mysterious characters – Iosif and Howards – quite significantly, with Arcudi’s proven method of distilling whatever’s needed down to its essence to wring the most out of these pages without it feeling rushed.  We also get a slightly better picture of B.P.R.D.’s entanglement with the army in this new world and a very frightening look of what’s going on over at Zinco.  Hint: The Black Flame, as rendered by Harren, is the most frightening god damned thing on the planet.

So we’ve been getting a lot of these action-filled arcs in Hell on Earth, and they’ve been good and/or great, only really ever suffering from pacing hiccups.  ‘Flesh and Stone’ is on the great side of things, with the bonus of coming with significant chunks of story, as well as letting one of the newer house artists really, really shine.