WITCH

The effects of “Civil War II” spill over into James Robinson and Joelle Jones’ “Scarlet Witch” #9 when Wanda’s twin brother Pietro visits her Manhattan home and takes the conflict to a personal level. Readers will likely be so accustomed to “Civil War II” titles featuring multiple characters that Robinson and Jones offers a welcome alternative in this issue, which features just two. In fact, with its single setting (Wanda’s home) and simple cast (one male lead and one female lead), the issue is composed like a play and the dialogue could just as easily be performed by pairs in an acting class. RELATED: Marvel Gives Official Details on “Civil War II’s” Extra Issue Wanda’s efforts to master herself and her abilities have been at the forefront of this title, and — while previous issues have offered the Scarlet Witch a new mission and challenges from without — Robinson’s compact and empowering script for issue #9 uses the vehicle of “Civil War II” to present a test of her conviction from

In “Scarlet Witch” #4, Wanda and Agatha walk the witches’ road in pursuit of the Emerald Warlock. Chris Visions’ artwork gives their mystical journey a heaping dose of moody chaos, and James Robinson writes an able — if formulaic — script. Steve Dillon and Vero Gandini, who are responsible for the scenes in Ireland, aren’t given much to do in this issue, but they do go gangbusters on that final page. Overall, though, “Scarlet Witch” still struggles to build drama, but — in its approach to chaos magic and character relationships — it feels full of possibility anyway. Chris Visions’ rendering of the witches’ road feels wonderfully confusing and blustery. His bold, broad lines are so organic that they almost look like they’re unfurling; as a result, everyone and everything on the page seems as if it could curl or flourish away at any moment. He’s really a perfect match for a book about chaos magic. It’s difficult to create a landscape that’s nebulous but not ethereal, and Visions’ figu

James Robinson and Vanesa Del Rey’s “Scarlet Witch” #1 opens up with a charming blast from the past, a link to Wanda’s old days in the Avengers. However, with an ominous white-on-black epigraph on the second page, Robinson indicates that what’s past is past, and Wanda’s new life indicates the new re-framing of Wanda’s powers will focus on witchcraft instead of superpowers. The last “Avengers” movie gave Scarlet Witch wider name recognition. There, Wanda was defined by her relationship with her beloved brother Pietro and her traumatic childhood. In captions, Robinson spells out that “Scarlet Witch” #1 is going to be about who the character is when she’s not someone’s sister, daughter or teammate. It’s a worthy goal, but even characters who operate solo are defined by their relationships. Appropriately, then, Robinson brings back Agatha Harkness, Wanda’s mentor in witchcraft. Unfortunately, her presence is unsubstantial in “Scarlet Witch” #1. She doesn’t serve any function in the plo

Rather than revisit or retell the adventures of Sara Pezzini or Jackie Estacado, writer-artist Stjepan Sejic takes the famous Top Cow Artifacts world to a new setting and injects it with some youthful ambition in “Switch” #1. He also pulls back the curtain for readers to peek into the history of the Artifacts, both individually and collectively, and explores how and why a high schooler named Mary eventually inherits the Witchblade. Capably using the depth of this story, Sejic begins to illustrate how the Witchblade connects to other objects of great power. RELATED: CBR TV: Top Cow’s Linda & Stjepan Sejic: “They Respect Us Enough to Take Our Ideas Seriously” Sejic introduces the history of the Witchblade and brings in Una, the first bearer. The Witchblade, being a blend of the light and the dark, opens up the story, with Sejic expanding the universe in an organic way. Despite this, the end result is parallel storylines that have tenuous transitions tying them together, despite th

Some series skate around their genre, downplaying and softening anything that could seem strange, but “1602 Witch Hunter Angela” #1 embraces its historical fantasy premise with open, elaborately armored arms. From Marguerite Sauvage’s inviting court farces to Stephanie Hans’ magnetic, dark monsters, this is a fully and exuberantly imagined issue. Despite a tonal shift between Kieron Gillen and Marguerite Bennett’s sections that will jar some readers, “1602 Witch Hunter Angela” #1 is a gorgeous, vivid read. The two-story structure hasn’t always worked smoothly in “Angela: Asgard’s Assassin” but, in this issue, it reads winningly. After a dark opening page, the story transitions to Windsor Castle. Angela and Serah, hunters of the “Witchbreed,” arrive to see the King, and things proceed rather unexpectedly from there. The physicality in Sauvage’s artwork almost approaches farce. Lord Essex’s cries of “Regicide! Traitor! Heresy!” are accompanied by cartoonishly distressed facial express

Previous issues of “Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Witches” have taken the second part of that title to heart, but issue #3 focuses on the first. Matthew Dow Smith retells an Irish folktale about stories and their power, with the Storyteller himself bookending the issue. (Don’t worry, there are still witches involved.) It’s thematically pitch-perfect and invitingly written, but it needed smoother pacing and bolder artwork. I enjoyed this issue, but it didn’t have the extra edge to make it a must-read. Smith has chosen a perfect folktale for this series, and he does a fine job adapting it. The issue follows a sailor-storyteller who’s shipwrecked on a mysterious island where his imagination holds concrete, physical power. The dialogue is scarce, with most of the story told in captioned narration. As a result, it reads very much like a fireside story, with plenty of foreshadowing and editorializing. This approach also allows Smith to speak in broader strokes. Having a character say, “I

The beautiful first issue of “The Storyteller: Witches” by S.M. Vidaurri is both a triumph and a failure of visual storytelling. Each individual page is a gorgeous integration of text and visuals, where the sentences are as likely to have spiral shapes as the spinning wheels. Words swirl and dive into fairytale borders, dragon-sized swans and ancient trees. However, beautiful as they are individually, the pages don’t speak to or follow from one another, making the issue feel more like a series of particularly pretty posters than a flowing visual story. Still, this artwork really is stunning, and “The Storyteller: Witches” #1 is an enchanting charmer overall. The series is called “The Storyteller,” and S.M. Vidaurri really has created an issue that feels like the nicest storybook you’ve ever owned. The whole book seems to have been colored in watercolors, and the softness of it drew me right in. Though most pages stay in the same soft, bright palette, there are a few exceptions. When

While no ladyparts are haunted in the new issue of “Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose” Skeleton Man’s dreams certainly are — haunted by the influences of the films he fell asleep watching. A lighthearted done-in-one dream sequence that Jim Balent draws far more loosely, but no less buxomly, than his typical style, this issue feels like a die-hards only affair. Skeleton Man konks out after watching some old sci-fi films and we find ourselves floating through his dreamscape with the cast living together as cavepeople, attempting to forage for food and running afowl of dinosaurs at most every turn. For a book steeped in the supernatural and dark forces, Holly Golightly fills this issue with color and light. The tone of the script is purposely playful and the beat structure for the jokes are all in place. For all of this, though, the story just didn’t feel like it needed to happen. The women mostly stand around as Jon runs from dinosaur attack to dinosaur attack, only providing a glimpse a

“Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland” #1 has a ridiculously long (and rather fantastic) name for a comic. It also has a new creative team; with John Arcudi and Mike Mignola focusing on some other projects, Kim Newman and Maura McHugh have stepped on board to write this mini-series, with “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth” artist Tyler Crook joining the duo. It’s an interesting start, and there’s a lot of potential in where it will go forward. But for now, it feels like Crook is performing the heavy lifting. The vast majority of “Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland” #1 is setting up what’s still to come. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first comic outing for both Newman and McHugh (better known for their work in prose), and it feels like they’ve structured this mini-series like a novel. As a collected form, that’s not a problem at all. The pacing there can start out slow, and draw you into the overall story given enough time. As the first part of a se

“The Witching Hour” #1 continues Vertigo’s themed one-shot anthology series with nine stories about witches and witchcraft, Anthologies are usually mediocre as a whole, but “The Witching Hour” has both strong talent and an unusually strong group of stories. “Daniel” by Steve Beach, is a riff on the old link between witches, bigotry and persecution. Beach simple but potent plot twist confounds reader expectations. His fine linework and crosshatching shading makes the seance scene pleasantly creepy, but his approach is better represented by the realism of the emotional nuance in characters’ faces. In “Daniel,” witchcraft is real but it functions as insight, enabling the living to confront the complicity of silence and misplaced guilt. “Birdie” by Lauren Beukes and Gerhard Human is supernatural crime vignette. The plot has no surprises, but Beukes has a fondness for dramatic bird imagery and a knack for developing the fantasy genre of magical realism within comics. The art is an excelle