Scott Snyder

Wytches #1

"When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry" --

Wytches

Just wasn’t for me - didn’t enjoy the art or the story! 

Samantha Cummings

As Charlie struggles to save Sailor from the wytches' grasp, the monsters' true hold over the Rooks family is revealed in this, the harrowing ending to the series' first arc!

Wytches #6

Dimitris Papastergiou

Great ending of the first arc. 

Creepy. Dark. Scary. Awesome.

You need to read this if you like horror/mystery stuff. Unless you want to get pledged to the Wytches...and a pledge is a pledge. 

Ok, so there's a family, with a daughter, which daughter got pledged years and years ago to the Wytches and now they're back to take her. Of course nobody believes her and they think she's crazy, and that she killed a classmate and other stuff.. but things are happening and it's just, so different from the classic witch tales you read, it has something unique. Also the Wytches are not your classic witches. 

Last couple of pages in this issue and things are getting worse. Much worse. They're hiding but now they don't have to worry about the Wytches.. well they do.. cuz they're hunting them, but they have to worry about others too. And then there's a huge twist that's going to blow your mind. I mean.. HUGE. If you haven't read this issue yet and you're still on issue #5, get to reading. I promise you. I had to catch up on the series and after finishing it right now I'm left with a cliffhanger that's going to drive me crazy until the next issue gets published.

Art is as always top notch. And the ending is wonderful. Can't wait for the next one!

Ryan LaFerney

Wytches by writer Scott Snyder (Batman, Swamp Thing) and artist Jock (The Losers, Green Arrow: Year One) succeeds on so many levels at being not only a good horror comic, but a touching tale of love and betrayal. Wytches is dark and brutal, funny and sad. It's about not being able to control your surrounding and not being able to protect those you love. And it is also about the fact that we all possess the power to give permission to evil. Wytches is really nothing like horror fans have ever read. Wytches - is ultimately a book about the terrifying parts of ourselves we don't like looking at. The Wytches are monsters, but they're monsters that only act when we give them permission to.

So who are you going to pledge?

Reread: 2021 - still an AMAZING work of horror.
Reread: October 2021 - I think I'm gonna make this a yearly reread. This comic resonates with me. A story about how far you'll go to protect those you love and how to overcome suffering. A terrifying classic.
reread: 2022

Jasmine

Wytches follows the Rooks family as they move to the town of Litchfield after several traumatic events. They aren’t hopeful about the move but desperately need the change. Unfortunately, they’ve chosen the wrong location for anything resembling peace. There’s something evil waiting in the surrounding woods for the chance to claim what they feel is theirs. 


This book was excellent, and I can’t wait to grab the next volume soon as humanly possible! The art can be a tiny bit overwhelming, but I honestly think it goes perfectly with the theme of this book. Wytches is supernatural but also covers mental health issues which I thought was pretty cool. It’s a 4 star read for me. 

What are your favorite horror or horror adjacent comic books?

Maggie Gordon

Wytches, unfortunately, is a bit overhyped. It's a decent graphic novel, filled with creepy creatures, weird art, and suspense. But like so many recent graphic novels, it needed to be a bit more fleshed out before it would be allowed to be a classic. For example, Sailor, our main teenage protagonist, supposedly suffers from terrible anxiety. Except we never really she her struggle with it? She suffers in the book because there are TERRIBLE MONSTERS after her. But the anxiety is supposed to pre-date this even though we never see any evidence of it. Too much of Wytches relies on the creepy concept that would be even better if I had reason to care about the characters. Mom (who I believe remains unnamed) was in some sort of accident shortly before the book began and is in a wheelchair. She pledges her daughter to the wytches to get better and also to get the wytches to leave her and her husband alone (another issue that is brought up but never expounded upon). However, I don't even know this woman's name! I have no idea what she is suffering through, and, as a person with mobility issues at times, I know that there are many like me who wouldn't sell a family member to be eaten just to walk properly again :l Overall, the book has a good premise and lots of potential to grow, Synder just needs to slow things down and let us get to know his characters and world so that his story has proper emotive effect.

Emmett

Conceptually it was chilling, but once the truth of the witches had been revealed, it proved to be just that, and not enough to keep one up at night. The reviews at the back of the volume had promised a "scary", "terrifying" tale and I could not help feeling a little let down. The covers, too, enclosed within this volume, suggested something much darker than the actual story. The issue, I suspect, lay with the presentation - the reimagining of the witches as off-shoots of evolution and closer to beast than man was inventive, and their burrows (a word which was nicely-chosen) are well conceptualised, but somehow how the story was depicted, how it ran dampened and did not deliver as much of the visceral horror that I had expected and was waiting to feel. The characters in it were conventional, personality-wise, and were unexciting vessels of narration. I also wished more elements had been explained - for instance, what was in the 'pledge'? It would have led to a much fuller story. The art is generally beautiful, the colours apt (I liked the startling red most of all). The shades and shadows obscure, with just enough light to reveal outlines, leaving the delights of what might be there to the imagination.

Michelle Xu

3.5 stars. 

I think pure enjoyment-wise, it's closer to 4 stars, but I also just got so confused in the second half, mixed with the pacing near the end made me knock it down to 3.5

Overall, super atmospheric and I liked the art style and the extra splashes in the background. While it sometimes made it difficult to see what exactly was happening, it added to the creepiness of the story. The first half of the graphic novel was so good. I got hooked into the story and really felt that it was creepy. However, after the halfway mark, when Clara introduced some background on the wytches, such as pledging, the Irons, the cauldron, etc. I started getting lost. it was never really stated what the Irons was, so I kept getting confused. 

The climax of the story I think tried really hard to make connections from past to present. While I appreciated what that did in terms of showing character growth, it sometimes got too confusing to cut every other page back and forth between past and present. I think it could have benefited from like a few pages of past and a few pages of present so that I had time to acclimate to what was happening in each time period. 

Overall, it was a super creative and creepy story with a big twist I didn't see coming near the end. I wish it were longer!!

Jade Flynn

Read for my Divination O.W.L 2020 #magicalreadathon2020. Prompt - Third Eye: Assign numbers to your TBR and use a random number generator to pick your read. Career - Auror (done). Extra completed O.W.L

Анастасия Розова

Errr, no. Not my cup of tea. Didn't care for the plot or the characters. Plus I really didn't like the art style, which is important for me, cause it's a freaking GRAPHIC novel. I know why some people might like it, I'm not saying it's a horrible story. Just not for me.

Dina

It was a bit dark, but very interesting. I enjoyed both the story and the artwork in this.

Jurassic Jones

J’ai plutôt bien aimé cette histoire horrifique. 
Mais la surimpression du graphisme m’a vraiment déplu et perturbé. J’ai trouvé que l’histoire avançait vraiment rapidement et puis la fin est un peu « facile »....

Silje Risøy Helgerud

"When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient ... and hungry"--

Volume 1

Ariel Himboi

Curse of Crater House tells the story of Quinn, a realtor who is much more when it comes to houses. We recognize from the first chapter that our main character has experiences with the paranormal, and her traumatic past won't remain in the past as she faces a house that becomes more violent over time. 

In the house is a horror that steals unborn children, and how does this correlate to when Quinn was six and her entire family was burned to death save herself? And how exactly. will a paranormal investigation team help her out?

This debut surprised me by being better than generic horror copies. One, we have a women who sells houses by sensing what said houses want in "companionship". If a house wants a lonely old man, well, it better get one or else everyone else is getting spooked! It's more than that, though. And deeper. 

Two, not so bland characters. I actually enjoyed reading about Quinn and seeing her unravel throughout the novel. Her insistence on making sure the houses are at peace with everything they need, rather than how the clients feel. Also, the way she's able to push down her past trauma to create a brighter future for other people. Her past is far more secretive the farther in we read, and I enjoy seeing her slowly return to that dark state after having gotten away from it. 

Off the bat, however, I have grievances. I'm white so obviously I'm not the person to completely point this out as problematic, but there were quite a bit of references to the character of color via animal connotations such as calling her "tigress" and implying no one can ever spell her name right because it's "unique", as well as the fact that her entire character is seen as sexually frivolous. There were also unnecessary fatphobic moments that weren't important to the story but were deemed important enough to be pointed out by side characters and main character narration. It was a little overkill and inappropriate. Also, a reveal at the end involving the past of a child who was neglected and killed because of a disability and disfigurement? I thought we were done with these tropes, but okay. 

Otherwise, the story was pretty good for what it was and brought something new. I was stressed in the third half and excited to find out the big secret of the house, but unfortunately it was sort of ambiguous. 

There were also times I shook my head at. One moment the lead investigator believes, then he doesn't, then he does again, and I kept thinking... where's the consistency? Though, I did enjoy the modern humor of, "Have you ever seen a horror movie? Shit hits the fan when people split up." That was nice, I appreciated that. 

However, the ending didn't explain much. A lot happened, yes, especially to throw back to Quinn's own past and... secrets.. but I somehow found myself confused. So what does the house want? Why did she survive? What actually happened in the house? A whole book full of questions that were left unanswered. It's not the kind of ending where you think, "Huh maybe I should go back". No, she just.. drives away, leaving the scene behind. What about the evidence, considering the fire wasn't real? What about the handprints? The bodies? What happens next?

Despite the tediousness of not knowing anything at the end and wondering, alone, what the Hell was left out... It was pretty good, if not for the slight narration choices the author should have refrained from putting in. I'll leave that to someone qualified, but it left a bad taste in my mouth when reading. 

A not so bad horror book about haunted houses with an interesting cast with good scares. A must read if you enjoy reading about a character whose experienced the paranormal her entire life, with a group of investigators who want to prove the paranormal, and run into trouble, it's for you!

Also, a thanks to NetGalley, I was pleasantly surprised.

b.andherbooks

How far would you go to protect your family? Yourself? What would you sacrifice if you could have your darkest desire?

Gloomy and dynamic art are the highlight of this scary graphic novel. The story can be a bit hard to follow but prepare to be freaked out by the depiction of the "wytches" and the darkness lurking in people.

We read this for my Book to Art Club and created creepy tree watercolors!

Wytches #1

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