Written by Dan Panosian
Illustrated by Marianna Ignazzi
Colored by Fabiana Mascolo
Review by Kris K
As singer Donavan sang, “It must be the Season of the Witch.” Witches haven’t ever been this popular in pop culture. There have been popular shows and movies starring them, sure. And they seemed everywhere a few centuries ago in New England.
Now, though, witches star in movies, books, and TV shows everywhere. While Harry Potter certainly contains witches, they kept to a non-satanic family friendly form of magic. No devil worship or soul selling. (Though a little soul splitting). We don’t care about that franchise anymore, so now, the OG witches return. With the help of comic and TV show, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, witches bounced back in horror and fantasy. YA literature floods with stories of witches, especially involving teenagers in high school.
So its little wonder another comic appeared on the shelves in time for the spooky season, made all the more horrifying with being an Election year. An Unkindness of Ravens brings all the mystery and drama you expect in a teenage witch drama. Wilma moves to Crab’s Eye with her single dad to start a new life. She walks in to school for her first day, only to find she looks like a dead ringer for a recently missing student named Waverly. The principle even gives her Waverly’s old locker, which honestly feels a little hostile.
Wilma quickly attracts the attention of the whole school. First, she befriends Ansel Friend, a student with a healthy reservoir of self-preservation. Seconds later, she gets stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place. And by rock, I mean Mean Girls, and by hard place, I mean the Ravens, descendants of the Witches who survived centuries ago. They both have their eyes on the new girl. They both summon her to meet them after school. It’s about to get weird.
This issue succeeds at roping the reader in, even though, it serves as entirely as setup. No twists were applied at the end, nor were there jump scares or frights. Just a straight forward story, executed very well. The dramatic high school environment pulled me in surprisingly fast, and while I don’t particularly care for the Mean Girls/Clueless genre, I enjoyed this romp. The art creates the needed environment of spooky cliquey high school well. I look forward to seeing what the artist will do, when they get to play with more paranormal elements in future issues. Same with the colors. I liked what I saw, but I want to see more weird.
Verdict: Buy! I loved this comic. It flaunted the perfect feeling for a teenage witch comic, and it proved the trope lives strong.
