4 out of 5

A lovely, 6″ x 9″-ish printing of Laura D. Graves’ online-first comic, Witches Get Stitches is an impeccably drawn – if, here and there, somewhat inscrutable – short tale of ‘demon slaying demon’ Archvold, and her tuff time procuring a simple cup o’ coffee.

Graves’ style has the foreground / character detailing of James Stokoe, but she balances that with a fantastic use of negative space that not only helps one to focus on her great character / setting design, but also really nails the comedic beats, of which there are several.  The printing is especially crisp, on clean white, flippable paper stock, with glossy color covers done up in lovably garish pinks and greens and black.

The story is rather awesome nonsense, having Archvold procure some coffee from the cyclops-run biz in the midst of a bustling (with baddies) demon town, summon a cute dog from blak-magik nethers (?), only to have said dog transform into a big-butted, spaghetti-spewing, skull-faced monstrosity (?), which Archvold then punches and whatnot.  The action during this sequence is where it can get a bit hard to follow; Graves’ characters often fill up the panels, and so there’s not a lot of room to fit in fisticuff choreography, but rereading (which is easy and fun to do) helps with that, as does, interestingly, flipping through the pages online, which forces your eye to only tackle one page at a time.  Owning the print copy is preferable overall, though: the solid blacks look better in print, and you can really get in close and marvel at all of Graves detailing.

While I’m not sure I can forgive the in-comic internet’s advice of ‘sucking deez nuts,’ or one too many ‘hand’ puns, Witches Get Stitches is a fantastic blast of imagination and artistry, and I can’t wait to dive into more of Graves’ work.