My mandate to help bring comics and graphic novels with a speculative element to a wider audience is of course entirely self-imposed, but it’s important to me. That makes it even more vital for me as a reviewer to seek out new works from creators and publishers that I wasn’t previously familiar with. But that’s a challenge. The Discoverability Problem is real, and although I try to stay informed about upcoming releases, I know that I must be missing a tremendous number of worthy graphic novels that would benefit tremendously from being more widely read and discussed.
That’s why I’m always delighted when we here at Stately Skiffy & Fanty Manor have a publisher reach out to us asking us to review a new graphic novel. The fact that in this case, the publisher specifically asked for Trish didn’t diminish my excitement, because hey, something new from someone new!
Let’s talk about The Witch’s Egg. (Note: This review contains spoilers!)
The Witch’s Egg
By Donya Todd
Published by Avery Hill Publishing
It was a spiderweb moon
And the imps did wonder
What dark delights wouldst the cat-witch conjure
By the Sardine Queen, by salt and the devil, by blackwormy earth, and by the deep, dark sea, the catwitch Urfi conjures an angel to love her and have children with her. But angels aren’t meant for love, and with the embryonic egg of their unborn children, Urfi flees from her partner’s violence, enduring terrible trials to find a new and safe home in the faery forest.
As her children, Isobel, Batzel, and Mazel, grow up with her, they find the horrors their mother endured during her flight to the forest returning to their lives — this time for the three of them to defeat for good. With secret magic, solemn bonds of friendship, and sisterhood, they can at last stand against the threat of the angels’ terror and insanity in this dark fairytale of motherhood, magic, and apocalyptic romance.
A gorgeous intergenerational family story of promises made, promises kept, and a mother who would do anything to protect her daughters.
This is a challenging graphic novel on a number of levels. Let’s begin with the art: This is another work that tests my personal definition of comics — it feels like there have been a lot of those, lately! In many ways, this feels more like storybook art (though decidedly not for children). Did conventional six- and nine-panel grid layout go out of style while I wasn’t looking?
Donya Todd’s art is striking and powerful, but it’s work to read. The publisher’s description above calls it “gorgeous” and that’s true. It also deliberately challenges. This art straddles and erases boundaries, between grotesque and cute, between crude and refined. The cover email we received used Adventure Time and The Nightmare Before Christmas as comparisons, and I can see that. But there’s a lot more going on here.
The keen sense of visual design contrasts the childlike aspects of the character art. That’s not due to a lack of skill; this is clearly deliberate. There really is a striking degree of intentionality, here. The level of detail and the superabundance of decoration in the art and the page layouts makes that very clear.
The visual style — that adorable grotesquerie — takes time for a reader to learn, and even to accept. I initially found it genuinely off-putting. The cover actually made me wince. Those big, lidded eyes, yikes! I had to push myself to continue reading past the first few pages. It was difficult until I understood what Donya Todd was asking me to do — put in the effort needed to appreciate the beautiful in the monstrous — and how central it was to this book’s project.
All of which is to say: Deciphering the art takes some doing and because of that, this is a graphic novel to be savored. I normally don’t sweat reading electronic review copies; in this case I feel like I probably missed out by not having physical, printed pages to linger over and take in. I’d encourage you to read The Witch’s Egg in hard copy, if you can manage it.
The art isn’t the only aspect that requires the reader to be not just invested, but involved. The narrative does as well.
I mentioned earlier that the publisher originally reached out to Trish asking for a review of The Witch’s Egg; the cover email made it clear that they hoped Trish might be interested in part because of her glowing review of John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build a Nest In.
That’s an interesting comparison, and I understand why they used it. There’s a similar interest in monsters and the monstrous and in the inner lives of the people who more traditional stories would label villains. By centering the monsters and their needs — their biological and emotional needs alike — both stories challenge us to extend our empathy and question the assumptions we make about the monstrous other.
But honestly? The Witch’s Egg goes harder. Because while this story is cute, it’s not cozy. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is brilliant, and it flips lots of scripts, but at its heart it’s a romance, complete with Happily Ever After. But The Witch’s Egg is a tragedy.
In a story that turns on fairy-tale logic, and accordingly includes a great deal of casual cruelty and disproportionate retribution, watching the descent of the angel Urbina into madness is genuinely disturbing and distressing. It steps away from the mythic framing of omens and prophecies to depict what feels an awful lot like a woman driven to an act of unspeakable horror by untreated post-partum depression. That the story then snaps back into a fairy tale quest structure doesn’t make it any less painful. The reader’s memory of the angel before her fall remains, and we carry that with us in watching all the bereaved catwitch Urfi’s later choices.
And those choices can be brutal. While there are moments of joy and of grace in The Witch’s Egg, they’re short-lived. The word that keeps coming to mind is unrelenting. Events have been set in motion, the prophecies will be fulfilled. The Worm King will rise and, with the angel, seek to destroy the world. The fact that he’s also just a frightened, lonely child is terrible, but it doesn’t change things. Urfi and her daughters will respond as they must, and do what’s necessary to save themselves and as much of the world as they can from the family they still love.
This is, as I said of another work on a recent podcast, not an entry-level graphic novel. But it’s a bold, deeply-considered and beautifully-executed book that challenges the reader both visually and narratively. It’s not for everyone, but it succeeds admirably on its own terms. I recommend it.
Disclosures: I have no personal or professional relationship with the creator. The publisher provided me with a complimentary electronic copy of the graphic novel for review.
