By: Brandon Siefert (writer & letters), Lukas Ketner (art), Andy Troy (colors) & Sina Grace (editor)
The Story: Our titular Witch Doctor runs into a necromancer on a case that has ties to an urban myth about waking up in a tub full of ice.
Five Things:
1. LOVE these characters! – In 5 short issues (4-issue miniseries, plus this one-shot), this creative team has really made me LOVE these characters. Dr. Vincent Morrow has this great, hurried swagger where he knows just what the problem is but doesn’t want to suffer any fools along the way. He’s kinda like a comic version of House without the limp. Then there is the weirdness of Penny, who looks like the scrawny, heroin addict with stringy hair and a hoodie. But she’s hosting a demon and literally eats monsters for sustenance. Finally we have Gast, who is the everyman helper and brute force for the team. It helps to have one “normal” member of the team for the reader to identify with and help us see just how strange their world really is.
2. Art is very Wrightson-esque. – I look at Ketner’s art and it reminds me instantly of Bernie Wrightson. Hopefully you can appreciate what high praise that is because Wrightson is one of the absolute masters of comic art. Other times, he reminds me of Tony Harris (again, high praise). He uses this fine line and pours incredible amounts of detail into his panels. Unlike a lot of artists whose work gets worse the more detail they add, Ketner’s work get’s better. This is one of the best looking books that Image is publishing right now (colors too).
3. Whacky paranormal stuff galore. [SPOILER ALERT] – There are all kinds of fun things in here if you like the paranormal. For starters, it begins with a guy finding himself in a tub full of ice with an incision in his side (Yay! Urban Myths!). Only, as it turned out, no one stole his kidneys. The necromancer has put IN the kidney of old Egyptian pharaoh in hopes of bringing him back. And the necromancer has a familiar that is based on her own stillborn child. And there’s all the insanity with Penny and her extensible, poison injecting fingers. It’s just a riot of the wacky and weird.
4. Funny. – At one point, as the pharaoh is reanimating and Dr. Morrow wants him to begone, he exclaims to the necromancer: “Your god has no junk!” to explain why she shouldn’t want this “God” back. That kinda sums up his attitude. But there’s also all the humor relating the kidney theft urban myth and how they can’t leave Penny alone with the guy because he might eat him or when Gast is forced to give the poor man a paranormal questionnaire (“Have you or any of your immediate family been under the influence of a curse?”). Just about every page has something that’ll make you snicker.
5. Love interest for the Dr. – Did I mention that the necromancer is a sexy woman? She seems perfectly set up to be a kinda Catwoman to Dr. Morrow’s Batman where she’s always up to some mischief, but Dr. Morrow won’t quite deal with her because she’s attractive. I don’t care if that is a common literary device, it’s fun and I’m glad that the creators may be incorporating it. She’d make a great recurring character.
Conclusion: I hate to anoint anything with only 5 issue published as “the best”, but with that “It only has 5 issues published” caveat firmly in place. Witch Doctor is one of the best series being published right now by any publisher. It features excellent dialog, fun/paranormal circumstances, great characters and art that looks like the second coming of Bernie Wrightson. I think this is a “must buy”.
Jumping on point?: This would be a great issue to pick up if you were interested in sampling the series. You needn’t have read the preceding 4-issue mini to know what’s going on.
Grade: A
-Dean Stell
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