Review by Karl Verhoven
A cover more suited to an adult DVD of girls planning to shag their way through Spring Break in New Orleans sets the tone of Witches from the beginning. It involves three alluring women with mystical talent who’ve been relegated to bit parts in the Marvel continuity over the years having to form an alliance to return an ancient evil called the Hellphyr to a book where it was supposed to have been trapped.
This is usually the type of event it falls to Doctor Strange to resolve, and he’s there at the beginning to panic and unite the three women while mansplaining exactly what they have to do. It turns out the Master of the Mystic Arts can’t do the job himself as it requires a specific combination. A member of the Kale family is required, in this case Jennifer, the underworld is represented by the reborn Satana and Strange’s current assistant Topaz qualifies to represent divinity. That’s never entirely explained. In the meantime, the repeated claims of the Hellphyr being so powerful are somewhat belied by it cutting through humanity at the rate of a person a night.
Brian Walsh’s script is supposed to be hip and sardonic, but it’s patronising at best and offensive at worst. Topaz is given subservient dialogue verging on plantation respect for fear of the whip, Satana is constantly provocative and Jennifer alternates between aggression and insecurity. Meanwhile it seems as if the witches are all a ploy and the real way to banish Hellphyr is by Strange setting a world record for expository dialogue in a four chapter story. “Many centuries ago a divine spirit and dark spirit came to Earth and passed on knowledge of all mysticism to Ilyana Kale, Jennifer’s ancestor”, Strange explains, resisting the temptation to note how mighty generous of them that was. “The tome of Zhred-Na was formed”, he continues, “but the gods were angered at giving away their most guarded secrets to a human”, as well they might be, and readers might be concerned about all the waffle considering that’s not even half of what Strange imparts on a single page.
The excess dialogue, brat behaviour and constant bickering is intended to entertain, which it doesn’t, and from Walsh’s point of view delay any encounter with the Hellphyr, which it does. What prevents this from being a total waste of space is astonishingly evocative art from Mike Deodato Jr., even if so much of any given page is covered by word balloons. Unfortunately, that’s only to the halfway point, when Will Conrad takes over, at that point in his career all style over content. Multiple babe poses therefore accompany well drawn faces on poorly constructed bodies with the backgrounds slathered in black ink. Deodato can pull this off, but Conrad can’t.
One well concealed surprise awaits in the final chapter, but at the cost of entirely changing someone’s personality, so not very satisfactory after all. The ending suggests we’ve seen the formation of a new team, but not even the sleaze ensured this sold well enough to see the witches together again.
