Product Description: Doctor Strange, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, recruits three young witches - Jennifer Kale, Topaz and Satana - to find the mysterious Tome of Zhered-Na, which threatens to destroy the entire world! Featuring stunning artwork by AMAZING SPIDER-MAN penciler Mike Deodato Jr.! Collects WITCHES #1-4.
WHAT?! ^ The art is beautiful, but the story, the characterizations? No. Jennifer Kale is often rude and disrespectful, without the kind of charm that lets some characters get away with that sort of thing. There's a fair amount of ageism as 2 out of 3 girls dismiss Dr. Strange strictly on account of his age. Dr. Strange himself is mostly out of character; the story implies that he's having a secret sexually exploitative relationship with Topaz, for one thing. Topaz had been a white woman with blonde hair who was an empath and healer. At some point her character was changed to a different race -- what?! -- along with a different personality and apparently became younger and more immature psychologically. What?! All those things happened before this story, thankfully, but --! The trio of girls is supposed to represent heaven (Topaz), earth (Jennifer) and hell (Satana). Satana is appropriately nasty -- I guess -- and is made to look like Sharon Doherty from the Charmed tv show, but has lost the classy, icily aristocratic qualities she had in earlier versions. Jennifer Kale, the hip college girrrl, is cynical and dismissive -- 'cause that's cool, right? And of course as a representative of the good, Topaz is a naive fool, ripe for exploitation by that dirty old man, Dr. Strange. She and Strange have this big moment at the end when she stands up to him, having had enough of his ordering her around, essentially lying to her, and presumably the sex, which itself is implied to be rushed and strictly for Dr. Strange's benefit. What?! It's no wonder this potential series never went anywhere. All of these characters are familiar to me from previous stories in years past but they're all unrecognizable here. This writer, this Brian Walsh guy, evidently knows nothing about these characters and respects them even less. If he ever wrote anything for marvel before or since I'm unaware of it, and boy, it really shows here. Great potential idea, horribly mangled.
Gorgeous Deodato Artwork, Ok Storyline ^ To fully understand this book, you need to travel back in time to the year 2001. Marvel Comics plans to capitalize on the female based tv shows and movies that are hot at the time. They decide on using three mostly unused magical female characters in their universe (Jennifer Kale from the "Man-Thing" comic, Topaz from the "Werewolf By Night" comic, and "Satana - the Devil's Daughter" from several of Marvel's horror comics) and have them led by the most recognizable Marvel comic-book sorcerer, Dr. Strange, in a quazi-Charmed/Charlie's Angels storyline, having Dr. Strange acting as Bosley. Fine and dandy. Enter writer Bronwyn Carlton and artist superstar Mike Deodato Jr.
Marvel hires Bronwyn to do the writing chores and Mike to draw the comic and tells them that the project will be a regular monthly release comic book once it's on their schedule. Happy to have a new series to work on, Mike then goes above and beyond the call of duty by releaseing his preview art on many on-line comic book sites to drooling fan-boys. And drool they did! The thing you have to understand about comics is that the majority of them focus on testosterone filled male characters whereas the female counterparts are generally not as popular and harder to sell. This is somewhat understandable as the majority of comic book readers tend to be male. With that in mind, it was very suprising to have the general response to the on-line preview art be: "Wow! I normally don't collect female character comics but after seeing Deodato's pencils I'm definately giving this one a shot."
Now flash-forward three years. (Yes, you heard me right. THREE years.) Marvel Comics finally releases the comic, and the storyline and art barely get any notice. Why you say? Here's the answer: Bronwyn Carlton and Mike Deodato work hard on two issues and submit their work. Marvel flounders on the storyline and characters used and ultimately decide they want a total revamp AND the regular series is now to become a mini-series. (four issues in length) Bronwyn and Mike listen to the changes and submit many MORE pages of work with their requested alterations. Little happens after that. It is then decided to put the comic on the back burner for a while as Marvel just can't decide on what it wants, aside from the fact their vision was crystal clear years earlier. Mike is left hanging so he goes off and is hired for other comic book projects. Similarly, Bronwyn Carlton leaves the title as there are no black and white directions given.
After sitting on their hands for a while Marvel comes back to Witches and hires Brian Walsh to take over writing for the title and he tries to make some semblance of a story out of the conveluted mess the Marvel editorial staff made from a once simple idea. (Axel Alonso and John Miesegaes replaced Lysa Hawkins on the editing chores) The reason for the sudden interest? Mike Deodato Jr. had just had a successful run on The Incredible Hulk and was moving over to Amazing Spider-Man. Never one to miss out on a buck, the long forgotten Witches was back in the fore-front. One problem though, with Mike Deodato Jr. busy on another title, he had no time to work on Witches anymore. Solution? Enter another artist: Will Conrad.
The storyline goes something like this: A decendent from a powerful magic family, Danny Kale, accidently opens a book of magic and thus an evil monster escapes. Sensing what happens, Dr. Strange recruites three witches, one being Danny's sister Jennifer, to stop the monster before it destroys the world. Though the girls don't exactly see eye-to-eye due to their varied personalities, they agree and the Charmed/Charlie's Angels storyline ensues.
Though the story is for the most part understandable, it does suffer due to the fact you can pick up on areas where the original story was most likely butchered from. And although I LOVED the beginning Mike Deodato Jr. artwork in the book, the second half's artist leaves the reader scratching his head as to why the book's art isn't as polished as the first half is. And worse yet, the book ends on a dangling point where a whole new adventure is to begin, yet despite the fact this book was released in 2004 the storyline is yet again left floundering as nothing has been done with the story a year after the fact.
All in all, I WANT to love this book after hearing the premise and seeing so much of the beautiful artwork, but can't give the book more than 3 stars due to the directionless feeling recieved once the story is over. Hopefully Marvel Comics can stick to their lorals and accomplish a solid book originally thought of. The only other option is having potentially great work such as Witches suffer needlessly at the hands of luke-warm editorial decisions.
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