Wytches #3

Is it just me, or doesn’t it feel like comics aren’t quite as immersive as other kinds of fiction? Movies and TV play on so many senses that the experience is often visceral to start with, and books have the ability to wrap you up in the words, taking you out of the world. Comics require a little more work; you have to meld the words and visuals yourself into a cohesive narrative, and if one is at odds with the other, the effort is that much harder.

I think my point is I don’t feel fear from comics the way I do with movies and books. It’s not as potent and it doesn’t last as long, and it’s often because of something as trivial as ill-conceived coloring. What started out as effectively disorienting streaks and spots last issue has become a full-blown distraction, with not a single page escaping the splatter treatment from Hollingsworth. Maybe this chaos of color is meant to become more prominent as the Rooks’ crisis escalates, but if that trend continues, the next issues will be unreadable. As it is, peering through the fog gives you a bit of a headache.

It’s a shame that Hollingsworth gets in the way of the story this time around because it’s definitely picking up. Charlie’s uninvited guest spills quite a few hints of the forces we’re dealing with here, almost taunting him with the revelation that Sail hasn’t just been pledged, but “pledged her over special.” That probably means that Sail won’t be the only victim, here. Uncle Reggie suffers the same fate as poor Ellen in #1, and as that comatose boy in #2 smelled a pledging on Lucy, the list of casualties probably won’t end there.

But again, who’s doing the pledging here, and why? Charlie’s visitor remarks, “Someone’s suuure got it in for you all, Mr. Rooks. You must have some secrets, don’t you? Yeah, you do.” She’s confident about her assessment, and given that she may have actually escaped the Wytches’ grasp, perhaps she deserves to be. Thus far, we’ve seen Sail’s darkest secret (the grisly death of Annie) and Lucy’s (plowing into a Wytch), but despite the amount of focus on Charlie, we haven’t seen what his deal may be. Lucy suggests a drinking problem, but it’s doubtful that’s the kind of secret that merits a pledging.

Anyway, the real victim here is Sail. Unlike Lucy, who’s in denial about the circumstances of her accident, and Charlie, who skirts around Lucy’s accusations (“If you disappear again…”), Sail has laid bare all her sins. Her diary offers an even more intimate glimpse into her thoughts, and they are those of a girl who’s already wired for anxiety to start and whose constant traumas are driving her to insanity. Like any good horror, Wytches stakes its suspense on the fate of an innocent. You’re not necessarily afraid of the Wytches themselves, but you’re afraid of what they can do to the characters you care about.

That’s probably why Snyder starts the issue on a flashback to happier days, with Lucy, Charlie, and Sail laughing and enjoying themselves in a massive playground tube maze. Their interaction is a crafty bit of writing from Snyder, who captures the voice of a nice family without normalizing them into banality. Charlie complains, “You should always carry matches. Always! It’s the first rule of the zombocalypse. They’re not teaching you this stuff in Girl Scouts? Why the hell am I even paying for that?”

“There are waaaaay better first rules for the zombie war, Dad. Matches? Really.”

“And Girl Scouts is free, loser,” adds Lucy.

After that, how can you not root for them, especially after they’ve already suffered so much?

Despite the aforementioned coloring issues, Jock continues to pull out some excellently disturbing imagery. His masterstroke comes when Charlie, stumbling around the woods as he searches for Sail, hears a sobbing, pleading voice. One panel, we see only the stoic trunks of the surrounding trees, a few leaves rustling by. The next panel, we get a close-up on an open mouth with jagged teeth moaning, “Heelllp,” from a tiny hollow in one of the trees, followed by a bulging, bloodied eye, the pupils frantically dilated. That’s a visual that would work in any medium, and it’s the one that sells Wytches‘ horror.

Some Musings:

– Lucy was pregnant with a second child once upon a time. Was it lost due to her accident or because of the pledging or both?