Reviews 

Review: Harvest #2

By | September 7th, 2012
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

A miniseries about the underground organ market from Shadowline has got to be chilling as anything, and now on its second issue out of five, “Harvest” continues to bring the intelligent and well-paced horror.

Written by A.J. Lieberman
Illustrated by Colin Lorimer

As Dr. Benjamin Dane continues his plunge down the rabbit hole that is the black market for human organs, he signs a deal with a devil named Craven which Dane signs in blood with an alcohol level of about 22. His only help? The kid on the cover. Harvest: Medical Grade Revenge.

Benjamin Dane — formerly “Dr.” — has got to be one of the more unheroic main characters in indie comics right now. Run-down, desperate, drug using and morally relativist, you’d think it would be hard to structure a series around a guy with so little in the way of admirable qualities. But far from estranging the reader from this story, Dane’s got a trainwreck appeal of his own, something that rises out of the awfulness of his circumstances and the bad behavior that got him there. Despite all his mistakes, we’re on his side simply because he’s not as terrible as the people who are employing him, and in a world as shady as the one of organ harvesting, relative good is better than none at all.

Continuing in a more linear mode than the one they applied to disconcerting effect in the first issue, Lieberman and Lorimer here give us some more details on how Dane was recruited as a surgeon for illicit organ transplants and how he decided to try and get out of the business. These are two sequences of events that we get a few hints about in the first issue, but the intention seems to be to deepen the reader’s engagement by exploring the nuances of these sets of circumstances. And man, the detail is not wasted. More than simply creepy, this story is believable, and all the more horrifying for it. Dane comes through as this addictive personality, somebody who needs the rush of bringing people back to life despite how physically and emotionally unfit he may be to do so. And the atrocious — and highly lucrative — world he’s operating in is all glitz and dirty dealings, with Dane’s boss preferring the word “client” to “patient” while his associate, Greer, explains that the donors are “willingly exploited”.

As exposition-heavy as this issue is, however, it never feels like a character is stating the obvious for our benefit — which is a pretty neat trick. The fact that Dane is a newcomer to that particular world is helpful, of course, because he can ask expository questions for us while his reactions (or lack of them) give us insight into his personality. The result is a really immersive and character-focussed manner of storytelling, steadily paced and artful in its dispensation of information. And as for the kid on the cover, whose presence in the last issue was a bit of a puzzle, let’s just say that he serves to tell us that much more about Dane’s psychology. Yeah.

The art continues on in its scritchy, detailed way in this issue while still managing to be utterly lucid and comprehensible. Lorimer packs a lot of action and information onto a single page without compromising its composition, and he makes it look easy. The surgical equipment and apparatus, meanwhile, are drawn extremely precisely, and look like the real thing. And while the character work isn’t exactly consistent (Greer and Dane’s faces can be a little variable), it’s compelling, with Dane’s facial expressions in particular exhibiting a lot of range.

The colours, by the way, are magnificent — keeping for the most part to the cold and creepy range with a lot of blues and greens, Lorimer makes some surprising palette changes that diversify the look without breaking up the mood in the slightest. The changes in colour also help out a lot with the more complex pages, lending unexpected oomph to panels too small to get a lot of information into.

Lieberman and Lorimer got off to a good start with “Harvest” #1, and this series keeps bringing the goods. The creators are making excellent use of the limited space afforded by a miniseries, crafting a hard-hitting story that’s both smart and visually arresting and doesn’t skimp on the character development. Most remarkably, the delicately-handled pacing is making this a series that doesn’t cry out to be read in trade, even though I’m sure it will look great that way too. A miniseries that really exploits the single issue format isn’t something you see everyday — and when the story is as complex and absorbing as the one that fills the pages of “Harvest”, the result is one truly accomplished horror comic.

Final Verdict: 8.5 — Buy


Michelle White

Michelle White is a writer, zinester, and aspiring Montrealer.

EMAIL | ARTICLES