Brandon L. Rucker's Blog
Wytches #1 (Image) — I started out as a horror buff pretty early in life thanks to my horror and sci-fi-loving mom. I was weened on 80s horror and later got into suspense and psychological horror in the early 90s before the mid-to-late 90s sullied and soured both genres for a while. Thankfully, there was a nice resurgence in the early-to-mid 2000s that helped redeem the genres. I’m largely talking about film, but also books and some television. As for comics … I believe horror is a tough genre to pull off well in the medium.
In late 2011 I thought Scott Snyder’s (then the “new kid” superstar writer of DC’s main Batman series) throwback horror series Severed made a decent attempt. And so does Wytches here three years later. Since I’m well-watched and well-read in the genre and have even written in it myself with my own fiction, it’s easy for me to be jaded and hard-to-impress. Is Wytches well-written? I suppose so as I couldn’t honestly say it’s badly written. I’d argue that it’s better drawn by Jock (aka Mark Simpson). I can’t really put a finger on it to truly criticize it other than I felt it was average comic book fare. Jock’s art and storytelling ultimately earns this book its slightly above-average rating.
However, I’ll close with a compliment: Wytches is better than Robert Kirkman and Paul Azaceta’s Outcast already, writing wise, while perhaps right on-par story and art-wise with the other horror (and now smash hit) series. That’s certainly counts for something. — Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)
This debut issue premiered with some rather interesting variant covers:
Lost Signal 