Wytches, Vol. 1

Wow. When I was young, around 13, there was a horror book I read that stuck with me every night, coming unprompted into my head just as I turned off the lights. It was Whitley Strieber's The Wolfen. I'm sure there were a number of factors as to why this book made me a little afraid to walk around abandoned buildings (aside from more real dangers), but it was probably the way the author was able to create strong plausibility that such a horrific thing could exist - in the case of the Wolfen, wolf like creatures of extremely high intelligence that preyed on the forgotten, ignored and unconnected in our populations. The creatures were obviously fantasy, but described in such a way that people could easily mistake them for wild dogs, creatures that knew how to stay unnoticed in a bustling city. Wytches is going to do the same thing to me, except instead of being afraid of alleys in big cities, I'll be peering into woods in state parks, wondering what's in there. The story itself is fantastic - told in part through the perspective of a teenage girl, and in part through her father's eyes. What the creatures are, and how they prey upon people, is slowly revealed throughout the book. Snatches of encounters with these vile things are peppered throughout the narrative. And just like in The Wolfen, the author brings in the additional horror of disbelief - when people describe the danger, no one pays any attention because it sounds crazy. This is always one of the stronger hallmarks of really good horror - isolation while in danger. You can't call for help, because everyone assumes it's all in your head. Wytches takes this a step further with a plot point I can't reveal without spoiling one of the better twists toward the end. I was gripped very quickly. If I have any complaints, they are small but significant for me. I think the story leans a little too hard on keeping things mysterious to the point of being obtuse in the opening pages. I do like the use of the trope of showing a death right away - a standard way to hook horror readers and to foreshadow the things to come. But the combination of murky illustrations and vague terminology that you only fully understand closer to the end of the book made it hard for me to get as into the story as I did once things got rolling. I also felt that some of the artwork throughout the book was overly produced. Like a piece of music with one too many layers of instrumentation, all the extra artistic frass placed on top of the panels occasionally detracted from the experience for me. I didn't know why I wasn't 100% clicking with the art until the end of the book, where there artist shows full panels of the comic in the various stages of production - the inks, the colors, the shadows, then layers of other things, like color splashes and distressing on top. I could actively see the sweet spot of where I hoped the art would be in these illustrations, and it made it clear to me that what I wanted in those panels was just a touch less murkiness to the images so it was easier for me to see what was going on. That said, I think this book will be much better on a second read-through now that I know what the words and images mean at the start and where to look in each panel to understand what I'm seeing. If you enjoy horror, I'd definitely give this a try. Just don't plan any camping trips soon after you read it.

4.0