Comic Info
Comic Name: Wytches
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Scott Snyder
Artist: Jock
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2015
Wytches #1 Variant
Reprints Wytches #1-6 (October 2014-May 2015). Sailor Rook and her parents Lucy and Charlie are trying to put their lives back together after a very public accident upended their lives. Charlie is a writer and recovering alcoholic while Lucy is dealing with a disability after the loss of their child. Sailor is just trying to go to school and not be noticed for the mysterious disappearance of a bully classmate who threatened her at her old school. Something is strange in the town of Litchfield, and Sailor begins to question if her nightmares about her classmate are beginning to happen again.
Written by Scott Snyder, Wytches—Volume 1 is an Image Comics horror comic book. The series is illustrated by Jock and received positive reviews.
I didn’t read Wytches at its release and didn’t know much about it. Some comics are fun to go into blind. While Wytches does have a bit of a mystery involved (it felt kind of easy to solve), the real hook of the series is the horror which is slowly building up around the Rooks as lives in the woods surrounding their home.
The comic feels very cinematic and you can imagine it as a movie or even a TV series. The characters are fractured and damaged, and you don’t know why at the beginning of the series. Snyder realizes that in real world situation, you don’t sit around rehashing things with people who already know the events, and as a result Wytches feels more natural. The secrets of the characters pop up throughout the story and eventually you get a pretty good idea of what has happened, what is happening, and why it is happening…it unfolds in a quasi-mystery, but it feels more like real life reveals.
Wytches #5
Jock’s art is also a benefit to the project. Jock is very inky, and in the 1990s, inky wasn’t always good. Here, inky works. The darkness is surrounding the characters and creeping in on them. It is dangerous and the horrors of the wytches is new and fresh (opposed to the classic witch or a modernistic coven along the lines of Rosemary’s Baby). The wytches creep and craw around the background and their ties to nature helps tie into the art and the style of Jock’s visuals with a sense of dread.
The only problem with Wytches is that Wytches—Volume 1 (as of 2021) is a misnomer. Wytches was released in 2015. The series trucks along and while it could be considered a “stand alone” series, it also feels like there is so much more to explore and tell. What happens to Sailor next? What retaliation will there be for what happened in Litchfield? Snyder is a busy writer, and I’m sure he has plans for Wytches—Volume 2 at some point, but they have come to fruition yet…so you just have to sit back and enjoy this collection until that happens.
