There’s a skinwalker loose on the streets of Setham. Gem wants to see that the skinwalker is eliminated, but she’s got a target on her chest as well. There’s going to be a showdown of some sort, but it’s going to have to wait until Gem deals with the people looking to take her down in Flawed #4. Writer Chuck Brown continues to carve a story into a world of darkness with artist Prenzy. The brutal darkness of Brown and Prenzy’s world makes a bit of a stronger impact in its fourth outing than it has in any prior chapter. 

Somewhere in the past, Gem was dealing with politics in the city. Since the city in question is a war-torn City of Kings in Egypt, politics happen to involve helmets, body armor, and semiautomatic weapons. Meanwhile in the present, Ruby is restless in the city of Setham’s rare animal sanctuary. If she could walk right up to the skinwalker and put an end to him, she would. Unfortunately, it won’t be that easy. People are looking to turn her into a memory. As luck would have it, Ruby is in a position to dictate where and when she’s going to meet these people. 

Brown’s initial glance into Gem’s past provides some background that helps to establish the world of Flawed just a bit more. It’s also nice to know that Brown isn’t shying away from showing the grizzly brutality of the skinwalker in more detail. Gem is clearly a very troubled person, but she’s battling demons. Flawed is a symphony of darkness that Brown is orchestrating quite well. As the world of the series begins to emerge more from the shadows, Brown offers reassuring glimpses into its deeper complexities. Gem’s world is clearly in good hands.

Prenzy has an impressive mastery of kinetic action on the page. He’s catching the violence and aggression from a variety of different distances and angles...all of which seem to find just the right way to capture everything for maximum impact. The fourth issue finds some particularly effective use of low-angle shots to amplify the overwhelming sense of the action. There’s some remarkably good use of color effects as well. Early on in the issue, there’s a chillingly stylish image of Gem reflected in the eye of a man as she kills him. (Wow.) 

There isn’t much in the substance of the actual story that’s terribly new or inventive, but Brown and Prenzy are bringing it all to the page with such distinct style that Flawed makes an immense impact on nearly every page, both in art and script. Flawed is a dark and slickly appealing place, but it keeps all of the horror close enough to the panel to maintain a lucid perspective on the brutality that’s being continually sliced and pounded into the page. At the rate Brown and Prenzy are going, they’ll need to let up on the darkness a little if the series is going to maintain for much longer.

Grade: A