A review by marthmuffins
Harrow County Volume 5: Abandoned by Cullen Bunn

2.0

Harrow County - 2.5/5

The first two issues of this arc are largely further expounding on the history of the mythology surrounding Harrow County, namely focusing on

Spoiler

the ancient Family which Emmy is a part of and the titular Abandoned

. As backstories go it is interesting stuff and does expand on the characters of Emmy and the Abandoned, as well as on the mythology of the series, but I dislike big backstory dump stories such as this and by this point the last two volumes of the series have largely been centred around that. Also, I personally found the material covered in Family Ties more engaging as it involved Emmy directly in some way, instead of only being told to her second hand (although much of that volume still involved people talking at her rather than Emmy taking direct action).

The last two issues were more engaging, returning to Emmy dealing with the happenings in Harrow County itself and showing the creeping alure of her newfound powers in a fun way. It's a classic creature feature setup but subverted in how we now know this creature quite well, and Emmy is trying to stop both sides from killing one another (

Spoiler

or, more accurately, trying to stop the hunters from being butchered

). I much prefer these somewhat smaller scale, Harrow-focused, stories to the grand mythological tales of the last few issues but we'll see how that develops as we head into the back half of the series.

The art by Tyler Crook is excellent as always but guest artist Carla Speed McNeil does some really good work on the first two issues as well (minus one-or-two dodgy looking faces for Emmy). I really liked her depiction of

Spoiler

the Family a lot, especially Hester

, for example.

Overall, not my favourite volume down to how it's focused a lot on expositing about mythology over being centred on character and horror but still fairly solid, and most likely essential to the upcoming back half of the Harrow County series.