[IMAGE] – WYTCHES [ESP-ENG] (2014)

WYTCHES [ESP-ENG]  (2014)

#Wytches

Publication information
Publisher	Image Comics
Format	Limited series
Genre	Horror
Publication date	October 2014 – present
Number of issues	6
Creative team
Writer(s)	Scott Snyder
Artist(s)	Jock
Colorist(s)	Matt Hollingsworth
Creator(s)	Scott Snyder Jock

Synopsis

The series follows the Rook family, in particular their daughter Sailor. The family moved to the town of Litchfield, NH following an incident involving Sailor and a particularly vicious school bully named Annie. In this incident, Sailor was attacked and Annie went missing, prompting rumors that Sailor killed her. Eventually the speculation grows to the point where Sailor's father Charlie and mother Lucy decide that the only thing to do is move the family to a neighboring town in the hopes of starting over again. This proves to be unsuccessful as some of the rumors have followed the family and Sailor still feels ostracized from her new school peers. The family is also largely unaware that the town is home to its own supernatural secrets, in particular a tradition where a person will pledge another to strange beings, wytches, in the nearby forest in order to gain a boon from them.

Sailor is eventually captured by the wytches after being "pledged", smeared with a green liquid that attracts them and identifies the pledge as a sacrifice. Charlie is attacked by a hunter at the same time, who tells him how to hide from and fight the wytches, whose lair is hidden beneath a enormous tree with ginger root clumps growing above ground. Charlie and Sailor escape and race home, closely pursued by a large number of devotees of the wytches. At home, Charlie and Sailor are attacked by Lucy, who reveals she pledged Sailor in exchange for having her paralysis healed, as well as paying a debt to the wytches owed by her great-grandfather. She begs Charlie to pledge Sailor again, after which they'll erase their memories of her and be able to restart their lives. Charlie smears the pledge on himself and Lucy, telling Sailor to run and find the Irons, a family of wytch hunters. Sailor escapes through the basement, and is confronted by a large number of her schoolmates, all of whom have received boons from the wytches. Sailor uses a garden sprayer to dose them all with pledge, and the wytches slaughter all of them as Sailor escapes.

Development

Snyder came up with the idea for Wytches after recalling a childhood experience where he and a friend made up stories about a family of satanists living in a nearby Pennsylvania forest that were constantly trying to capture the two boys. He later revisited the area out of nostalgia and saw a moving object that looked vaguely human, which made Snyder think that there was something in the forest that had been waiting for him to return. This idea translated into the concept of witches that would patiently wait for their victims as opposed to chasing after them, as they knew that the victims would inevitably be drawn back to the witches' location. This further expanded into the idea that the witches would have "this incredible knowledge of their ancient natural science" that would enable them to perform various feats like curing various illnesses and extending life spans, which they would trade with locals in exchange for the individual pledging a person to the witches. Snyder also choose to have the witches not possess magical abilities and instead be "a bestial, primal creature that lives deep in the woods"^[8] and decided to add in the concept of parental fear, that a parent would be ultimately incapable of protecting their children 24 hours a day, regardless of effort.

WYTCHES [ESP-ENG]  (2014)