Wytches Volume 1 has all the elements working in tandem to make one hell of a scary horror comic. This helps create mood, with the darkness letting the reader’s imagination go wild. The artist also excels, with the aid of Hollingsworth’s colours, at creating eerie environments for the wytches to hide in, with dense and tangled woods. That image gives me chills every time I think about it.
This is especially true in an early reveal of one crouching in a tree outside a bedroom window. Jock’s designs for the wytches are terrifying and look like something out of a nightmare. To top it all off, Wytches features fantastic art. There’s also Sailor, who grows to care about after learning about her past and her experience of being pledged. His attempts at writing his wrongs and how he worries for his family make you want to see him succeed. There’s the father, Charlie, a writer of children’s books but also known for not being the best father at times. It wouldn’t be half as scary if you didn’t care for the characters. It also makes the comic unpredictable as situations are not spelled out for you – unlike some horror films. By giving the readers details as they need them, he keeps readers on the edge of their seats as they enter the unknown. Wytches is also full of mystery, which Snyder has paced out to build the suspense.
These techniques force the reader to fill in the gaps with their imagination for what they can’t see. Another way this has been done is through Matt Hollingsworth’s colouring, in which he has overlayed paint splatters on the page, with more intense pages receiving heaver splatter. This is done in a variety of manners, from hiding them in the shadows to showing them from only a distance in the woods. Instead of just showing the wytches straight away, the reader is given only glimpses of them. What we get instead are ancient and horrible creatures that lurk in the shadow, full of violent blood lust. It’s a fantastic way to set the tone and distance the reader from preconceived notions. However, when you turn the page, it’s revealed that this definition has been violently scratched out. The first page shows the dictionary definitions of the word “witch”. All expectations about what the wytches are are thrown out of the window in the first two pages. It’s established early on that these aren’t the witches you know from popular culture.
This is because she has been pledged to the Wytches. The daughter, Sailor, is haunted by these creatures and her past. The problem is there’s something even worse waiting for them when they arrive at the remote town of Litchfield – wytches. After some tragic incidents, the Rook family decided to relocate to escape the misfortune of their recent history and start fresh.
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