POBB February 20, 2023

Pick of the Brown Bag

February 20, 2023

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  A comic book review blog created, owned and operated by yours truly, Ray Tate.  This week in the POBB I look at The Harrower from Boom Comics.

Harrow, according to Merriam-Webster, is a "a cultivating tool set with spikes, teeth, or disks and used primarily for breaking up and smoothing the soil."  In the old days, it also meant to "pillage and/or plunder."  Both definitions apply to the monster. 

Isn't it nice when the art and creature live up to the ballyhoo of the cover?  

I'm not spoiling anything.  Any chance that this is just some real estate swindler dressed up in a spooky outfit is laid to rest on page four.  

Justin Jordan and Brahm Revel want you to see this creature, neither in shadows nor fog.  Nevertheless their story is filled with mystery and suspense.  

Let's tackle the suspense first.  This is a comic book that follows the Joe Bob Briggs mantra of a good drive-in flick:  "Anybody can die at any time."  

Characters that you think will be the continuing protagonists don't make it out of this premiere issue alive.  Characters you think are on the up and up, or at least uninvolved, turn out to be "High Priests."

The mystery lies in just what the hell is this thing, what is its nature and how it came to be.  Revel and Jordan appear to take their cues from the superior episode "Die Hand Die Verletz" of the superior horror series The X-Files.  

The adults know something is really going on, and has been going on for decades.  They however keep their kids in the dark.

The horrors takes place in Barlowe, NY.  The setting pays homage to Haddonfield located in John Carpenter's classic Halloween.  Barlowe is a town that's small and isolated, but the townsfolk are educated somewhat sophisticated Northerners.  Not the populace of Deliverance South where one may expect a crazed religious cult to spring up.

The kids learn about the Harrower in school, as local folklore.   These lessons undermine the reality of their situation.  

Thus is born a potential hero.  Our mystery man is the Sheriff's son who knows more about the Harrower than all the rest.

Things come to a head on a lonely stretch of road surrounded by the woods.  Modern horror movie conventions play out, but Jordan and Revel plant extra seeds of plausibility.

There may be a perfectly mortal reason why the burst tire of the car strands the group as well as why cell phone coverage suddenly deadens.  I also like how Revel and Jordan separate the group.  The whole situation appears perfectly reasonable, especially given that they're still within the civilization of Barlowe, NY.  It's not like the kids are in nowheresville, podunk capitol of the world.  They're on familiar ground.  They have every reason to believe nothing is going to happen to them.  Alas.