Writer: Scott Snyder
Artist: Jock
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 8th October 2014
First off, I want to mention the good things about the book, because it does a lot of things very well.
The cover is great, creepy and atmospheric. The interior art is great as well, and equally creepy and atmospheric. The script is built up scene by scene like a television programme or horror movie, and it reads exactly like a screenplay pitched to a television producer.
The characters are more recognisably human than you'll find in a lot of contemporary comics today. You can believe they exist, even if it’s in a Stephen King kind of way. If you are a young comic book writer then this is a book that you’ll want to emulate. This is how you begin a story. This is how you do it properly. This is how the pros put a comic book together.
Okay, here comes the inevitable sentence that I’ve been building to.
I disliked the comic.
Why?
The story is unpleasant, and the language used by the characters is coarse and gross. This is one of those books that thinks ‘edgy’ material means a rape scene or some violent homophobia. It’s a book where a young boy smashes his mother in the face with a rock. It’s a book with graphic descriptions of sexual violence. It’s a book where a teenager feels guilt because her psychopathic bully got exactly what she deserved. It’s a book where her supposedly loving father fails to explain to her that if somebody is attacking you then you have the moral right to defend yourself, as violently as possible until the perpetuator is neutralised and no longer a threat to do you harm. If you don’t, then line up for a life of victimhood. Line up for the voting booth. Line up for the new Apple slave surveillance product. Line up for the abattoir.
I did not like this book.
It is a book for the paranoid suburban dwelling masses. It’s a book for the lame ass fanboy Sheeple (and the pejorative fits the cretins like a wetsuit on Michael Moore’s blubbery body) that enjoy mainstream serial killer dramas on the corporate whore mainstream globalist media.
Hey kid, do you enjoy Dexter and Game of Thrones? Do you particularly enjoy the violent rape and torture scenes? If so, then pick up this book.
YOU’LL LOVE IT.
Scott Snyder explains his motivations in a long essay at the close of the book. Wytches is based on his childhood imaginations where he would walk through the woods with his mate, thinking about evil witches. He went back there recently, saw an old car that he remembered from childhood, went home, wrote a story with perverts, psychopaths and special ‘Wytches’ in it, and called Jock to make it look cool.
Jock succeeded. It looks great. But the beating moral heart of the story is yucky. It’s mainstream sick, celebrating, glorifying and revelling in disgusting things that just make us all more suspicious and distrusting of each other.
It is not a very nice book.
And I don’t want to read it.
Yuck.
Yuck.
Yuck.
Rating: 6/10 (For the script construction and impressive art)
No comments:
Post a Comment