Wytches Volume 1 Graphic Novel Commentary
“There’s a house in my neck. That’s what it feels like. A hollow with a second me living in there. A sick me with her own thoughts, her own dreams. All she wants is one thing. To go back to them, the things in the woods. Sometimes I think I can hear her screaming in there, screaming for her parents. I can almost see them, out there in the trees. Waiting behind the branches. They have faces on the sides of their heads, to peek around at me. If I listen, I can hear their teeth… I can hear their teeth at night. Hungry. They go chit chit chit chit chit chit chit chit chit chit.”
It all starts with a woman in a tree. The graphic novel Wytches by Scott Snyder and Jock follows teenage Sailor and her parents, the Rooks, as they move to a new town in rural New Hampshire. But rumors about Sailor are already flying all over town. “Did she really kill that girl?” But the horrors that drove the Rooks from their prior home are feeble in comparison to the fresh horrors awaiting them in their new home. Wytches haunt the woods, kidnapping and killing anyone who is “pledged”— a deal made between another human and a wytch, granting the human a wish in exchange for a life. Young Sailor finds herself pledged and can’t escape the nightmare she witnessed in the last town: her bully attempting to kill her, then being sucked into a tree. Can Sailor evade the wytches clutches? Will her father step up as the hero she needs him to be? What betrayals are in store for their family? As Sailor and her dad uncover the mystery behind the wytches, they see just how many people in their small town are willing to kill in order to empower themselves. But Sailor learns of a group called the Irons, who might have the answers to defeating the wytches. Can she find them before it’s too late? Snyder and Jock’s impressive graphic novel offers a unique take on a familiar favorite with art that will draw your face so close to the page that your nose bumps against it, looking for the shape of the wytches amidst the trees, in the darkness. Tender and terrifying, Wytches is about being anxious and afraid, yet forced to be brave, failings in parenthood, alcoholism, the violence of greed, accidents changing our lives, and father-daughter relationships.
The graphic novel’s explanation for the wytches interests me because they are drawn to selfishness. As Sailor’s father searches for her, he interrogates a police officer about the creatures. The officer tells him, “We’re all selfish creatures. And they’re the Gods of selfishness. They can smell it in us. It attracts them, the needs and wants. Hormones and such they can sniff out. They come to you when you want them to.” The wytches rely on humans’ greed and cruelty to hunt and survive, meaning the only solution is for other humans to resist selfishness. To be selfless, especially in the face of horrors, is no easy feat, yet speaks to a solution for our own very real crises in America today. A necessary note for our times.
There will be a volume 2, however, it is not out yet. While searching for the release date, I saw volume 2 was supposed to come out in 2022, so I don’t know where the project stands now. I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment. In the meantime, I plan to read another one of Scott Snyder’s graphic novels called Book of Evil.
