By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
Oct. 21, 2014 -- The earliest promos for the horror series Wytches, which debuts Oct. 8, shows a misshapen finger with a monstrous fingernail scratching out the dictionary definition of “witches.” That’s more than just symbolism, because this series has nothing to do with any previous witches, whether from history, folklore, myth, legend or pagan religion.
Nope, these Wytches – created by A-listers Scott Snyder, writer, and Jock, artist – are entirely original. They are also very, very scary.
Snyder says he got the idea from a childhood making up stories about evil things in the woods. And then, as an adult, getting a “sudden jolt of fear” near a dark woodland when the wind and the light played tricks on his eyes, making one tree look all-too-human, stepping out from behind another.
“And then I knew what Wytches would be about,” Snyder said in an interview. “It would be about these monsters, these creatures that live in the woods that we never see. And they don’t come after us, until we go to them, and want something from them.”
Because that’s the worst part, you see. Not them. Us.
Yes, the Wytches are terrible monsters, of course, who hide in the woods and eat people. But they’ve got ancient knowledge – of natural science, chemistry, lost arts – and can do things we can’t. Cure fatal diseases, for example. Make bad memories disappear. And, of course, make people disappear. Once you’ve “pledged” someone to the Wytches, it’s only a matter of time before that person is brunch.
And we do that. Because we’ve got monsters in us, too, and these things let ‘em out.
“So the story becomes what would you do, who would you give them … who would you pledge to them, to get what you want?” Snyder asked. “To extend your own life, to escape terminal illness, to save a loved one, just out of greed. But they’re there waiting for you to come to them, and give them something, and in return they’ll give you what you want … or what you think you want.”
But as bad as we are, let’s not forget that the Wytches are pretty monstrous even without our help. And they’ve been around for quite a while. Snyder promises us a little history with our horror.
“We’ll sort of explain in this arc the scope of the Wytches history and their nature and you’ll understand more of their physicality,” Snyder said. “The science of them I’m really proud of. We’ve tried to design them in such a way that they’re just beyond what’s in the realm of the suspension of disbelief. Their eyes are designed a certain way, their faces are placed – without giving too much away – a certain way, to make them more effective hunters. Their hands, their physiology, all of that stuff is meant to make them scarier and also more believable. In some ways that’s part of the fun.”
As to history, “you’ll see when the Wytches of our book are explained how we try to bisect our Wytches from that terrible history that comes with burning at the stake and all the terrible things that were don’t to women accused of witchcraft.”
And it has nothing to do with Wicca, which Snyder says he hopes he treats with respect, and which he separates from the Wytches early on.
“It’s issue 3,” he said. “I can tell you if you’re reading the book and you’re looking for that, it comes in issue 3. When somebody from the past who has escaped the Wytches – at great cost – explains the history of Wytches and what they really are, creatures vs. what they’ve been thought of in the past. It certainly differentiates the people who have been accused of witchcraft from those who worship Wytches in our book.”
Still, this is all going to be bad news for the Rooks family, a trio we meet in the first issue. They have moved to New Hampshire because of a little to-do that teen daughter Sailor got into, and also a car accident that left mom Lucy in a wheelchair. That leaves dad Charlie, a comics artist, trying to hold together his stressed family, and getting a little stressed himself.
And that’s before a deer walks into his studio. And bites off its own tongue.
But wait, wait, that’s not the scary part! Or, at least, not the most scary part. Some of that would have to do with Sailor’s problem, which is that where the Rooks previously lived, Sail was being bullied by a large, gun-toting bully named Annie. And things were going very badly with Annie – really, really badly – when something even worse happened, that left Annie missing and Sailor unable to explain what she saw.
Snyder says he wasn’t bullied as a child, but he saw it happen. Worse, now that he’s a parent, the fear of his child being hurt by others never really leaves him. So the scene with Annie … well, it’s pretty raw.
“I know it’s a very brutal scene and I know that it goes very, very far in its language and its cruelty,” he said. “I just felt it was appropriate for this book so I hope people don’t think it meant to be sensational or that it was over the line. For me it really is meant to be terrifying because (Sailor) is being terrorized in that sense of a total loss of control. For me the scariest stories a lot of the time are the ones where you think you’re going to overcome this monster and do something that traditionally would get you out of danger but all of a sudden it exacerbates the danger. … That scene is supposed to be very much about being in a nightmare where it gets worse and worse.”
Which is a darn shame because, honestly, the Rooks are very likeable. I don’t imagine there are going to be any happy endings in a book this dark, but one can hope.
“We’ve tried to create characters here that really have layers to them,” Snyder said. “Charlie has things in his past and feelings about his life right now he doesn’t want to admit are conflicted but are. The way that all of us have feelings that sometimes surprise us in ways that are uncomfortable. Sailor has feelings about her own sense of guilt about what happened. Lucy has secrets about the night she was in her car accident. So each of the characters have things that the Wytches can prey on. … And all you have to do is give them somebody.”
As must be obvious, Snyder – the writer on DC’s top-selling “Batman” as well as horror titles “American Vampire” and “The Wake” – knows his way around horror story. Teamed with Jock, whom Snyder selected from their previous collaboration on Detective Comics (“It was always going to be Jock”), Snyder is poised to tell his darkest tale yet.
“I knew that (Wytches) would allow me to get to the kind of horror I love,” he said. “Because they would be scary physically, which is always great, but it would be a way of exploring the kind of monster that would be reflective, I think, of some of the scarier aspects of human nature. And that would be a great rabbit hole to get to fall down and explore.”
Go to the Captain Comics Round Table on Facebook for the complete Scott Snyder interview.
Reach Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), the Internet (comicsroundtable.com), Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies
Thanks, Rob!