"Wytches" During the Plague Times

**Some small spoilers for Scott Snyder's Wytches**

Like many people, I’m currently adapting to new patterns of life in the wake of the pandemic. Things that seemed routine at the beginning of the year have required new and strange behavioral changes for all of us. Going for a walk? Grab your mask and avoid people. Wanting to buy groceries? Avoid going in if possible, and even if they’re delivered, wipe down packaging with soap and water to keep yourself safe. These rapid anxiety producing changes and the sickness that we hope they will keep at bay, have me thinking about the types of tactics that good horror uses to scare us.

A recent episode of my podcast (Common Creatives) focused on Scott Snyder, who is one of the most successful comics writers of the last decade. The episode necessitated a deep dive into Snyder’s body of work and prompted me to re-read some of his original creator-owned titles. Even when he’s writing superhero fare, Snyder’s work always has an air of horror to it. However, his stories that unambiguously belong to the horror genre are bone-chilling. In order to evoke horror, Snyder often focuses on the importance of familiarity. He taps into the horrorific by undermining the familiarity of places, things, and relationships we think we know, especially those in which we would normally find comfort. He employs these tactics highly effectively in Wytches, a six-issue series released by Image Comics in 2014, with art by Jock and colors by Matt Hollingsworth. And the ways that Wytches articulates horror can provide a lens through which we might narrativize some of the terrors of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

I won’t provide a full plot summary in this post, as I highly recommend this book and don’t want to detract from the experience of reading it, for those who haven’t. That said, there will be some spoilers ahead. Snyder’s wytches don’t adhere to standard witch tropes. They are massive inhuman creatures with spindly limbs and disgustingly stringy hair. They are god-like and will strike Faustian bargains with those humans who will “pledge” someone to them to be eaten. These creatures live in the woods and can grant you what you need to be happy, if you feed them. As Snyder puts it: “They’re huge and ancient and primal and deeply evil […] They can give you almost anything you want. And they’re out there, waiting for you to come ask. But first, you have to give them what they want… They have to eat, after all. So who would you give to them to get what you want?” (“Who Would You Pledge,” Wytches #1).

I believe one thing that makes Snyder’s perspective on horror so resonant in this historical moment is his focus on making the familiar unfamiliar, and thereby making it threatening. As we see empty city streets, vacant restaurants, and filled hospitals, familiar places are showing themselves as horrific. The woods may seem peaceful and serene, but if you turn your back for a moment, something evil and decaying is coming for you and those that you love. Going for a walk in your neighborhood is a nice way to clear your head, but it could also be the occasion for contracting a pathogen that will have you or a loved one fighting for your life in an overcrowded hospital. 

 Additionally, this historical moment is forcing us to face the fact that pathogens and threats and ultimately decay are a primary condition of being alive in this world. While the virus to which we’re reacting is novel, death has always been present, just like Snyder’s wytches. He writes, “I found myself haunted by the image of the witch, peeking out from behind the tree. I knew what had really frightened me wasn’t the ‘witch’ in the trees ­­[…] but what had really gotten me spooked was the idea that this witch had ALWAYS been there” (“Who Would You Pledge,” Wytches #1). This Lovecraftian sentiment about rot and malevolence that consistently accompany us through life, or at least are never far enough away, is of a kind with the unsettling feeling of seeing our public spaces vacant and the abject tragic terror of seeing our hospitals overly full. Snyder’s Wytches, like all good horror, mythologizes the uncanny feeling that the things and places we have relied on, turned to for comfort, and often taken for granted, have turned ominous and dangerous. Even more than that, the idea that they were ever comforting was a childish illusion. The woods were never safe.

But many horror comics (and other forms of media) provide this emotional insight about the ever-presence of death. There is a more specific narrative element of Wytches that is particularly relevant during the early days of this pandemic. That is the notion that the wytches are at their most horrific and malevolent when members of a community pledge one another in exchange for the fulfillment of some personal desire. Those who are aware of the wytches (or more to the point, who worship and utilize them) are thoroughly devoted to the notion of pledging and a line that recurs several times in Wytches is “pledged is pledged.” The pledge that gives over a member of your own community to be eaten for personal gain supersedes all familial, relational, and empathic ties between human beings. When the deal is done, it can’t be undone. 

It strikes me that the recent protests against health and safety measures in the U.S., which are backed by conservative corporate organizers (https://nyti.ms/3eFiGRd), mirror this impulse in a truly terrifying way. Capital, it seems, is a cause for which many are ready and willing to pledge some of our most vulnerable citizens to the jaws of death. Religious studies scholar Stephen Young articulates this point astutely in a recent article on Religion Dispatches. He writes, “what people are willing to sacrifice for their god should likewise be a commentary on their deepest values […] The God of the Economy has long subsisted on human sacrifice in ways that reveal his character” (https://religiondispatches.org/restart-the-economy-is-a-prayer-to-a-conservative-god-who-demands-human-sacrifice). As the nefarious characters in Wytches would say, pledged is pledged.

            A dark and dangerous threat is lurking in the everyday world that we once took for granted as being familiar and safe. And now there are those members of our communities, who we have learned are willing to pledge us in order to get what they want. The most nefarious version of this intention comes from those who are fomenting these protests from afar, rather than to the credulous and choleric crowds. But make no mistake, they are culpable, as well. There is an inhuman and destructive force that is showing us how terrifyingly unfamiliar our world can feel and some people have let us know that they are willing to strike a deal and give us over to this force in order to bring their own desires to fruition. Much like Snyder’s wytches, who “wait for us to do something terrible to get what we want. They’re scary when we’re scary” (“Who Would You Pledge,” Wytches #2). In the early days of this pandemic, we are pretty damn scary.