Creation
Harrower was created by Steve Orlando and Carmen Nunez Carnero for the 2021 story arc Curse of the Man-Thing where she was the main antagonist.
Origin
Harriet Bromes was an anti-social child growing up, having been expelled from several schools due to her violent outbursts due to her dislike of people. Wanting to appease her, her father moved to the woods to get away from civilization. Unfortunately, a wildfire burned down their home, killing her father and leaving her an orphan, the tragedy only fueling her hatred for humanity.
She was taken in by her great-aunt, Augusta Bromes leader of The Hordeculture and they nurtured her grudge. Eventually, Harriet began to study magic and found a way to synthesize the technologies of Hordeculture with magical attributes, calling it “spellification”. The other members of the Hordeculture greatly disapproved of Harriet’s reliance on magic, which they considered “unreliable” and “anti-scientific”, as well as of Harriet’s genocidal objective. This led to Harriet abandoning the Hordeculture to strike out on her own, now calling herself “Harrower”, as she’s the one who will bring the “harrowing of Earth”.
Major Story Arcs
Curse of the Man-Thing
Harrower devises a plan to completely remove humanity from Earth’s ecosystem using Man-Thing, a being born of both magic and science, which she specializes in. Her fellow Hordeculture disapproves of Harrower’s methods and goals, arguing that magic is unreliable and that they need to manage humanity, not wipe it out. This angers Harrower, who thinks humanity will never change their ways and sees the Hordeculture as cowards who aren’t willing to do what’s necessary for the planet. She then abandons them to continue her goals on her own.
Harrower finds and ambushes the Man-Thing in the everglades of Citrusville. Taking him by surprise, she defeats him by ripping out his spine and brain, and causing his body to wilt to a husk. Combining her spellification with the Man-Thing’s power, she is able to cause massive vegetal growths around the world, creating grand spires out of plant material and pollen that can burn anyone they touch, which gets the attention of hero communities all over the planet. The growths react to the sunlight and release swarms of gargoyle-like, fungal drones which start to attack people and heroes all over the globe start to fight them off to protect the helpless citizens.
Harrower watches from the swamp as heroes around the world are fighting her minions when she is suddenly ambushed by her great-aunt Augusta and Lily Leymus. The Hordeculture thinks she has gone too far and is personally intervening to stop Harrower. But the confrontation comes to an unexpected end when Augusta and Lily accidentally fall into a trapdoor to another realm.
Harrower studies the portal and finds out it’s the Nexus of All Realities, but cannot find a way in herself. Meanwhile, Ted Sallis has regained control of the Man-Thing and enlisted the help of Magik and the Dark Riders to defeat Harrower and take back his swamp. A battle ensues as Man-Thing fights Harrower while the Dark Riders deal with her fungal drones. Harrower arrogantly tries to defeat the Man-Thing with the same move she did previously, but ends up trapped and sucked into his mindscape instead.
Harrower awakes to find herself in Man-Thing’s Dreadscape, a whole world inside the Man-Thing where anyone’s worst fears lurk. There she is confronted by a Ted alongside a manifestation of her deceased father. Harrower is terrified to face her father, who drags her to a manifestation of the burning house he died in. Consumed by her fear of fire, Harrower suddenly manifests back in the real world, terrified and still on fire. During her panic, she suddenly falls into the Nexus, much like her Augusta and Lily had before. With Harrower gone and Man-Thing regained control of his powers, and ceased the attacks around the world, putting an end to Harrower’s plans.
In the end, Harrower wakes up in another reality, finding Augusta and Lily watching over her. They explain that due to Lily’s expertise with the Multiverse and they have already found a way back home, but once they do Augusta is going to have “a long hard talk” with her grand-niece.