KINDERCOMICS
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Comics@CSUN
  • Comics Studies Society
  • KIRBY!

An Embarrassment of Witches

6/3/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
An Embarrassment of Witches. Written by Jenn Jordan and Sophie Goldstein; art by Sophie Goldstein. Coloring assistance by Mike Freiheit; calligraphy by Carl Antonowicz. Top Shelf, 2020. ISBN 978-0593119273, $US19.99. 200 pages.
Lately I've been reviewing Bildungsromane about young witches in training (here, here, and here). I thought An Embarrassment of Witches would be one of those, but it really isn't. Yes, it's a coming-of-age story, but it's also a grad school comedy about the experiences of two fairly new adults (not young adults in the adolescent sense) whose loved ones are high-powered academics or wannabes living in a rarified intellectual world ripe for satire. It happens that this world is one in which magic is commonplace, one where you can go to grad school to study "metamystics," and where shopping malls include businesses like Taco Spell and Aleistercrowley & Witch. But the story does not focus on learning witchery or spellcraft. It deals with applying for jobs and school, with internships, and with tense people having relationships at a bemusing transitional moment in their lives. It reads like a Friends-style sitcom combined with an academic novel, but is not as acrid as that might sound. Tonally, it reminds me of John Allison's splendid college comedy, Giant Days; its character writing is just as adult and just as piquant, and it conveys a similar sense of benign absurdity.
 Briefly, the story focuses on two best friends and roomies, Rory (Aurora) and Angela, and how their friendship is sorely tested by the moves they have to make toward autonomous adulthood: feckless Rory walks away from her supercilious boyfriend and begins looking for a new direction in life, while Angela takes an internship supervised by, of all people, Rory's mother, a famed and fearsome academic. Lies, evasions, and secrets result in a complicated tangle. Eventually, Angela and Rory have to renegotiate the terms of their friendship on a more adult basis. The plot reveals the unreliability and stumbling humanity of just about everybody, without demonizing anybody (characters who at first appear flat turn out to have depths). The book is smart, funny, and endlessly inventive, and scatters little comic jewels on almost every page. Rory and Angela are knowingly and subtly written, with great attention to their brittleness and quirks and, especially, the mostly unspoken complexities of their relationship. This is witty, human, open-hearted stuff.
Art-wise, An Embarrassment of Witches​ is a formally inventive knockout. The character designs are sharp and distinctive, the visual worldbuilding is a hoot, and the book looks like no other. Goldstein dispenses with gutters and borders, favoring jampacked full-bleed pages in which the panels rub right up against each other. The results are a bit overwhelming due to sheer density, but that jibes with the book's emphasis on complex social dynamics. It also makes the book a delight to page through again and again (the disorienting, Escher-like cover is just a hint of the pleasures and challenges inside). The limited color palette — two purples, a near-turquoise green, celeste blue, and a kind of mellow yellow — may sound iffy in the abstract, but works brilliantly in practice, making the book into a cohesive world of its own. All this is to say that the wittiness of the story is matched by an outpouring of visual wit. In short, An Embarrassment of Witches​ is a full-on delight.​​
0 Comments

    Author

    See Hatfield, comics and children's culture scholar

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    March 2024
    June 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018

    Categories

    All
    392
    About KinderComics
    Abrams
    Adaptations
    ALA
    Animal Stories
    Anthologies
    Anti Sexism
    Anti-sexism
    Awards
    Best American Comics
    Bookshops
    BOOM! Studios
    Business
    CALA
    CalRBS
    CBLDF
    CCEL
    Children's Lit In Academia
    Class/Classism
    Collaborations
    Comic Con International
    Comic-Con International
    Comics As Social Protest
    Comic Shops
    Comics In Academia
    Comics Studies Society
    Comic Strips
    Courses
    COVID-19 Lockdown
    DC Comics
    Decade In Review
    Dial Books
    Disability
    Disney/Hyperion
    Drawn & Quarterly
    Early Readers
    Ecology
    EGL Awards
    Eisner Awards
    Essential Graphic Novels
    Ethics
    Eulogies
    Events
    Exhibitions
    Fairy Tales
    Fantagraphics
    Fantasy
    Faves
    First Second Books
    Flying Eye Books
    Folklore
    Food
    French BD
    Friendship
    FSG
    Gallery 13
    Graphic Medicine
    Grief
    Harper
    Historical Fiction
    History
    Holiday House
    House Of Anani Press
    How-to Books
    Immigrants' Stories
    Instructional Books
    International Comic Arts Forum
    Jen Wang
    JLG Selections
    LA Is A Comics Town
    LGBTQIA+
    Libraries
    Lion Forge
    Markets
    Marvel
    McDuffie Awards
    Memoir
    Middle Grade
    Miyazaki
    MLA
    Music
    Mysteries
    Nature
    News
    Nobrow
    Nonfiction
    Oni Press
    Paper Engineering
    Picture Books
    Poetry
    Politics
    Public Speaking
    Race/Racism
    Raina
    Random House
    Reading (and Watching) Hilda
    Reviews
    RH Graphic
    Sales
    Scholarly Works
    Scholastic/Graphix
    Schulz
    SF
    Simon & Schuster
    SOLRAD
    Sports
    Superheroes
    Teaching
    Teaching Roundtable 2018
    Textbooks
    Tillie Walden
    TOON
    TOON Books
    Top Shelf
    Tributes
    Updates
    Webcomics
    Witches
    Year In Review
    Yen Press
    Young Adult

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Comics@CSUN
  • Comics Studies Society
  • KIRBY!