3 out of 5

Using the Storyteller framework (y’know, the old man and his talking dog) to have four different writer / artists tell us four different tales about witches.  Opinions will vary, of course, but here’s how it breaks down for me: one pretty lame story, one amazing one, one great one, and one good one, adapted from an actual Storyteller teleplay that I wish had been a bit darker in tone.  That means the majority of this series is pretty good, but with only one issue making a real lasting, read-it-again effect, it makes me lean toward the ol’ three star rating.

Issue by issue, from 0 to 100:

Starting off with a poo is issue #1 by S.M. Vidaurri.  Let’s allow that I have some lingering hatred from having sat through Iscariot; let’s further allow that S.M.’s ‘The Magic Swan Goose and the Lord of the Forest’ suffers from many of the same problems of lack of focus and page to page coherence.  The idea, as with Iscariot, has some merit – a rather humorous mash-up of tons of different fables, focusing around a curse yadda yadda and a girl and a witch – but man it stops mattering about a page in, as Vidaurri tosses three or four characters at us (a young woman, a king, a witch) who, like, end up not really mattering.  Same with the plot beats, which seem more intent on giving S.M. cool page layouts and the pursuit of that mash-up than actually stringing together into a compelling story.  And to those page layouts… while Vid’s light-handed painted style is very flowy, and pages are continually inventive, when something is meant to carry over to another scene, the lack of consistency in how its depicted is frustrating.  I’m also not big on the flourished lettering.  Cute, but it doesn’t help the story, robbing it of some beats.  With ‘Magic Swan Goose’ in particular, as I flip back through the pages, I think my problem with it is that it reads like a children’s book and not a comic book, but it’s missing some element of playfulness to make it a fun children’s book.  So: poo.

Next up is Jeff Stokley’s contribution with issue #4.  This is actually probably the most complete tale in the collection, in that it’s a very rich story in terms of characters and complexity – this is the one adapted from a Storyteller script – and Stokley’s art (with John Rauch’s wonderfully pastel-touched colors) has a wonderfully moody simplicity that makes me wish he’d get involved with some Hellboy books.  But at the same time you can sense the scripting handiwork in that it ends up feeling rather concise and happy-ending impaired.  Not that these stories shouldn’t be positive, but ‘Basilissa the Beautiful,’ which is sort of a Cinderella meets Baba Yaga bit – is too fleeting.

Issue 3: Phantom Isle by Matthew Dow Smith.  I dig on simple art styles like Smith’s – thick, clean lines, blocky attributes – but in this instance, along with his pale blue color theme – it really undersells what’s otherwise a fascinating spin on the power of storytelling, in which the lead’s yarns literally create a world.  I think if the art had been a bit more dramatic (and the story not ended with a wink), this would have been a contender for best of the lot.  As is, it’s a wonderful story, well-serviced by its visuals, but with potential for more impact.

Kyla Vanderklugt’s ‘The Snow Witch,’ issue #2, is the first issue I read of this series, and it set a high bar for the rest.  Another witch, another curse, spanning generations of a family, whose story we get to witness.  By allowing her tale to grow organically and drift, when necessary, into darkness, Vanderklugt breathes life into what reads more like a fable, or parable, than our other issues: it flows and grows and underlines its themes rhythmically, instead of feeling structured as a beginning / middle / end plot.  She also takes wondrous advantage of a landscape layout to manipulate space, and color, and some wonderful design motifs; her sense of visualization and pacing very much reminds me of Samurai Jack, which is a compliment.  This has the same thoughtfulness and simple but effective design that that show’s most quiet moments could effect.  A wonderful example of the possible expressiveness of the medium.