Second volume of a Southern Gothic horror series with a great team, Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crooks. I think the artwork--featuring the mysterious psychic "white witch" Emmy and her evil twin, and some really inventive haints--is the main event in this series. Really makes it worthwhile to check out, for the art alone.
The evil twin thing is not original and not handled in a particularly original way, and that's a bit of a problem. Oh, she's from the CITY! She approaches haints in exactly the opposite way that Emmy does! Too simple. That we even need a nemesis for Emmy at all is not clear, and Emmy sort of dispatches her without serious incident, finally. And okay, it's not particularly harrowing, as I found the first one was more.
But I like it anyway so far, daggonit! (That is northerner Dave patronizingly trying for southerner style. . . I know, how can I even like this series?!!) It's sort of atmospherically creepy, and you do come to care about Emmy, you like her. Something about the juxtaposition of the art and the tone of the Emmy story. She has depth and some complexity.
I like Emmy's supportive Dad, too, and I like how the town comes to respect Emmy's powers. This is a small rural Southern town dealing with lotsa monsters. The haints are just part of the scene, and the town just has to figure out what to do with them. Live with them, Emmy insists. That's the challenge, rather than to just--in super-hero fashion--obliterate them.
Or to get them all riled up and in opposition to the town, in evil twin fashion.
I especially loved the opening scenes, where we see Emmy figure out how to help the town with their various haint issues, by talking with the ghouls and creating sort of an understanding with them. The evil twin part of it is less interesting, but not UN-interesting to me. It's always visually interesting, at the very least. Maybe a 3.5 overall, this one, but I bump it up for that there (see what I'm doing here with the attempt at Southern dialect) (sorry) Crooks's art.