ROB'S NOTE: May has become the go-to month of the Comic’s Industry (even
though National Superhero Day is late April, but whatever… Congress…
pshaw). It is when Marvel drops their
big movie of the year. May also sees the
annual Free Comic Book Day celebration take place on the first Saturday of the
Month, so I hope you all got to check that out.
May also has 31 days of the month so what better way to celebrate the
wonderful world of sequential art with the 31 Days of Comics?
Seth Hahne, who runs the blog GoodOkBad,
has put together the 31 Days of Comics challenge. A daily challenge in which you are given a
category and you have to fill it with a comic that you think fits it the
best. You’re all on the internet, I
shouldn’t have to explain it to you. For
the rest of the month I will be taking this challenge. It is my hope it encourages others to make
and share their own lists either in the comments here or on their own
websites. The sharing not only might
turn comic fans on to works they have yet to sample but maybe catch the eye of
a few non-comic fans and highlight the diversity of the form.
Our prompt for Day 28 is “A comic that changed the way you
look at the world.”
Wytches
Written by Scott Snyder
Pencils by Jock
Colors by Matt Hollingsworth
If you’re
following along with the blog that these prompts originated from you might have
noticed I shifted a day around. I’m
trying to line up an interview for one of the days so bear with me.
Anyway, if
you go back through this list to Day 9 (which by my calculations was 4 years
ago) the topic was a comic that totally blew my mind. Up until last week I would have probably
reused that answer of The Invisibles here.
Invisibles definitely made a lasting impact on how I see the world. But last week saw the release of Wytches #6,
which ended Scott Snyder and Jock’s first arc on the series, and it left me
both frightened and secure that other people share my same fears. And no, it isn’t witches that I am afraid of.
It goes way
more personal than that.
Wytches
tells the tale of the Rook family, and in particular the father Charlie and his
daughter Sailor. As the series opens we
find that the family has just completed a move into a new neighborhood. We find out the reason for the move is an
incident that occurred in their previous hometown when a school bully, named
Annie attacked Sailor. Sailor was badly
hurt, and Annie disappeared leading to persistent speculation that Sailor
killed her. Figuring the best way to
flee the rumors was to leave town the Rook family migrates in order to get a
fresh start.
However the
new town hosts a supernatural presence that sets its sight on Sailor almost
immediately. There are creatures in the
woods that surround the town. These
creatures, the wythces, can grant wishes for the townspeople, but only if they
“pledge” another person to them. Once pledged they belong to the Wytches, and
it becomes quite apparent that Sailor has been pledged by somebody.
One prompt
that isn’t on the list that this comic definitely would have made was “A Comic
that Scares the Living Shit out of you.”
This is a truly disturbing comic on perhaps every level. Jock’s illustrations of the town and its
surroundings alone set up a mood of absolute terror and anticipation of
horror. When it comes time to actually
draw the Wytches themselves Jock makes them so natural yet twisted that I am
not sure I ever want to go to the woods again, because I’m sure I’ll “see” them
in the trees.
So besides
changing my life by not making me ever want to camp again, how else did Wytches
change my perspective?
I mentioned
earlier about Kieron Gillen’s ability to craft a compelling narrative while at
the same time examining a theme and how he always finds the perfect balance
between them. Snyder is able to pull the
same act here by giving us a creepy horror story that would be a perfect
Halloween flick to scare the living bejesus out of us while at the same time
making a story that explores a theme that is extremely close to my heart; the fear
of making a mistake as a parent.
Snyder talks
in greater detail about that fear in the back matter of the book, and while I
appreciate those essays greatly, it wasn’t needed for me to make the connection
to the book. Sailor might be the
character that things are “happening to” the most but we experience most of it
through her father Charlie’s eyes and reactions. It’s Charlie’s fears; fear for his daughter’s
safety, fear that he’s made the right decisions for his family, and the fear of
not knowing what his daughter is going through; that make this book beyond
surface level frightening for me.
It’s that
last fear, the fear that your child is going through something horrible and
huge and damaging but not having any idea what it is, that resonates most with
me. My son is 8 and so far is pretty
good at telling his mom and me what is going on at school and what he is
thinking. But I know he’s going to get
to the age at some point where he will hesitate to tell us stuff. Either he’s going to think he’s old enough to
handle it on his own, or that it would get him in trouble, or he’s embarrassed,
or (worst of all to me) that we won’t try to understand. As a teacher who works closely with teenagers
I can say without hesitation that some of these kids go through massive amounts
of shit and that the adults in their lives often only know the surface level of
that pile.
Snyder was
able to personify those fears through Wytches.
He gave it a face and he gave it a name.
And while I already had these fears, he did something very valuable for
me. He let it be known to the world that
he has them. By writing this story, and
the back matter Snyder let me, and others know, that it is natural to have
those fears. He reiterated the importance of trying to stay connected to your
child, even when it is hard and difficult and they don’t think they want that
connection. Snyder let me know I was not
alone.
And I will
never be alone. Especially in the
woods. Because Jock ruined camping for
me too.
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