It’s a good time to be a witch. I don’t mean literally, though based on my formative years
in Salem, Massachusetts there are some places where it’s always good to be a
witch. I’m speaking more in broad
pop cultural terms, as I almost always am. This year marks the 20 year anniversary of The Craft, a hit mid-‘90s teen
witchcraft horror flick that’s being lavishly re-released, Scarlet Witch is
finally finding her footing as a major Avenger, and this month marks the
release of the hotly anticipated Witch.
Given all that, I thought I’d take
a look at Witches in comic books.
Even though superhero books have always lived on combining disparate
genres into a whole that’s greater than the sum of their parts there aren’t
very many witches in comics but today we’re about to get the full spectrum on
all of them.
Okay; yes, I just said that Scarlet Witch is starting to
find her feet in the Marvel cinematic universe but if we’re talking about the
comics…that’s never really happened.
Originally popping up as X-Men villain alongside her father Magneto and
brother Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch eventually slouched into a heroic role as a
major member of the Avengers.
Despite her prominent role with Earth’s mightiest heroes Scarlet Witch
has never had all that much in the way of development or identity, even her
powers are hard to define.
Sometimes she just has luck manipulation powers, other times it’s chaos
magic, later she was able to manipulate reality; nobody had a good answer for
what her powers should be.
That ambiguity applied to her identity as well, she doesn’t
have a strongly defined character outside of “woman on the team.” I know that sounds dismissive but it
really is how Scarlet Witch fits into a lot of Avengers stories. Her most prominent storylines usually
just involve her love triangle with Wonder Man and the Vision or she and the
Vision’s failed family. Aside from
that, she was only ever interesting when she went bizarrely evil and crazy but
not even that could get people to care about Scarlet Witch for more than a
mini-series.
An offbeat choice for my favorite witch but that’s basically
why this category exists. The Witching Hour was an anthology
horror comic that DC put together in the mid ‘70s when other genres were
starting to retake some of the market share in the comic book medium. There had always been competitors with
superhero books like war comics and teen romance stuff but the ‘70s were the
first time things like westerns, fantasy, and horror reasserted themselves as
serious market contenders rather than just occasional curiosity.
DC had a plethora of horror comics at
the time, some of them revived classics like House of Secrets and House of
Mystery, others new titles such as Phantom
Stranger and The Witching Hour.
All of the horror books featured a host character, like Rod
Serling or the Crypt Keeper, to guide the audience through the story and the
hosts of The Witching Hour were
easily the best.
They were a trio
of witches named Morded, Mildred, and Cynthia and were modeled heavily on MacBeth’s “weird sisters” trilogy of
witches. Even though these three
didn’t have much identity they came loaded with personality and were the most
fun horror hosts. They’re a
perfect embodiment of the unique blend of cheesy charm and genuine creepiness
that make the ‘70s horror comics such a blast to revisit.
This is one of the few times you’ll ever see a Jack Kirby
creation sitting in the “everyone likes but me” slot. Klarion the witch boy was created as the antagonist to Jack
Kirby’s Etrigan, The Demon during
Kirby ‘s time at DC in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He was a pretty minor character for the longest time before
returning to prominence thanks a Grant Morrison mini-series that re-invented
him as less of a pest and more of an anti-villain. The new Witch Boy was a descendant of a clan of lost
colonists from the Roanoke colony living under New York. It was a weird concept that really
wasn’t one of Morrison’s better ideas.
What’s so frustrating to me about Klarion is that I have
seen him done well. In the Batman TAS crossover episode with
Etrigan the Witch Boy was a perfectly serviceable villain but the key word
there is villain. Nowadays
everyone seems bizarrely convinced his unique blend of obnoxiousness and ignorance
of modern amenities is ripe for a lovable main character, to the point he even
got a new series as part of the short-lived DC You branding initiative. Maybe one day Klarion will take up his
place as a bad guy again but as long as he’s being counted as a quasi-good guy
I’m fine with him staying way out of the spotlight.
Our first Marvel character of the list, though not our last,
is Agatha Harkness and she is, unquestionably, the best comic book witch of all
time. What I love about Agatha
Harkness is what a weird piece of mythos she actually is. See, everything about this character is
quintessentially witchy. She lives
in big haunted house on the outskirts of town, keeps a black cat, is a creepy
wizened recluse, and actually is a master of black magic and the supernatural. All of that would be fine if she was
tooling around with Ghost Rider or Dr. Strange but that’s not the case, instead
she’s a major supporting character of the Fantastic Four.
If the ridiculousness of that idea doesn’t strike you
immediately here’s the deal. The
Fantastic Four are THE name in sci-fi and rationalism within the Marvel
universe. Sure, they tool around
the galaxy meeting aliens but the team is rooted in science and rationalism to
a staggering degree, it’s their founding ethos and the driving ideology of team
leader Mr. Fantastic. That’s why
so many Fantastic Four villains are modeled on mysticism, like the Puppet
Master’s voodoo dolls, El Diablo’s alchemy, or Dr. Doom’s wizardry. So it’s a beautiful clash of logic and
aesthetics that one of their closest allies and oldest friends is Agatha
Harkness, the platonic ideal of a witch.
I honestly don’t know how or why Agatha Harkness got shoved
into the Fantastic Four mythos but I’m genuinely thankful that she did. The idea of super logical and
scientific Mr. Fantastic having to go to a powerful witch for help is the kind
of genre fusion comics were built on, but more than that it speaks to Mr.
Fantastic’s own limitations. With
most other things in the Fantastic Four mythos Reed is always the smartest guy
in the room, the one who could figure his way through the situation but when it
comes to magic, he has to bow to the experts.
So, remember back in the Witching
Hour installment where I talked about DC’s collection of horror comics that
came up in the ‘70s? Well, the
coolest one of those comics was Phantom
Stranger, a really weird and really excellent comic that I don’t have the
time to discuss here. However, in
that comic Stranger’s archenemy was a powerful witch named Tala and she was
amazing. The Phantom Stranger is
one of the most powerful beings in the universe and Tala was routinely able to
go toe-to-toe with him without breaking a sweat. She was super powerful and fairly empowered too considering
her own awareness of her sexuality.
So why am I the only one who likes her? Well, for whatever reason, she ended up
in the mid 2000s animated series Justice
League Unlimited where she was rendered a dreadful and kind of disturbing
joke of a character. Aside from
being massively depowered in the series she spent her entire screen time in the
third season being sexually bullied and physically abused by Gorilla Grodd and
Lex Luthor. It’s all terribly
creepy and ugly and a big black mark on an otherwise good series but it’s also
left most folks soured to Tala as a character. It’s a shame given how great she was in her origins to end
up ruined by a sloppy adaptation.
Here’s someone you’ll probably being hearing more and more
about as we barrel towards Suicide Squad
in August. Enchantress is a D-list
dc character who first popped up in the ‘60s though didn’t really emerge as a
character till the ‘80s. Her first
appearance was in a bizarre Bewitched
type story in the pages of Strange
Adventure where she first developed her supernatural powers. Later, she appeared in Adventure Comics as she is her, adopting
a very witchy visual design and fighting Superman a number of times. It wasn’t till she joined the Suicide
Squad in 1987 that she became a recognizable character in any sense of the
word.
While a lot of folks don’t care for Enchantress, her bizarre
history of multiple costumes and interpretations speaks to that, I’ve always
really liked her, both the visual design and her vaguely designed powers of
“witchcraft.” Her best
appearance was as a villain in the pages of Justice
League Dark but overall she’s a great character to have around when she’s
not just being used to fill the role of “sexy witch.” When books actually let her go big, evil super villain with
all kinds of spooky, Halloween-esc witch magic it’s a sight to behold. A lot of authors seem to want her to be
like magic Catwoman, defined by sexuality and walking the line between good and
evil, but honestly she’d be better off as Halloween/Witch themed Rita Repulsa.
Well this is a first, we actually have a tie in the violet
category between the Marvel and DC versions of the same mythic character:
Morgain Le Fay, the original witch from Arthurian myth. Let’s start with the DC Morgain Le Fay,
seen here in her most famous appearance as a Wonder Woman villain. The DC Morgain Le Fay is a lot like
Klarion only inverted. She also
first premiered in the DC universe as a foe of Kirby’s Etrigan owing to that
comic’s setting in the time of Camelot.
Since then, however, Le Fay has risen to be a major threat to the globe
and most commonly an archenemy of Wonder Woman. The Wonder Woman stuff is the big reason so many people
really love this character and it’s easy to see why. So many of Wonder Woman’s villains are either too weird to
take seriously or grounded entirely in the Greco-Roman mythos that throwing her
against an immortal Celtic witch is a great way to shake things up.
That immortality angle is a serious key to Morgain’s
character in the Wonder Woman run.
She’s an eternal witch but she’s obsessed with finding a key to
permanent immortality and eternal youth, which is why she ends up going after
Wonder Woman. It’s basically a
modern comic version of the evil Queen plot from Snow White but with the clash
of pantheons stuff to make it even more comic booky. Aside from all that cool stuff Morgain Le Fay is just
wonderfully designed in that classic Jack Kirby manner. Rather than the ragged robes of a witch
she sports elaborate gold exo-armor and billowing cape that make her look truly
mythic.
Now we move on to the equally beloved Marvel interpretation
of Morgain Le Fay. This version of
the character is pretty similar to the DC version in that they’re both big,
powerful super villains who are allowed to be megalomaniacal, which is itself
decidedly rare. Unlike the DC
Morgain Le Fay, the Marvel version isn’t actually immortal but instead strikes
at the present from a place of safety in the ancient past, lobbing spells and
attacks at the Marvel heroes while she’s still in the time of Camelot. It’s a weird idea but a cool one that
manages to flesh out the universe in an interesting way.
Far too often it feels like the sci-fi
and fantasy elements of a comic book universe stop existing when you extend
prior to the modern age so having a time traveling sorceress from ancient
England as a major threat to the present is a great way to circumvent that
issue.
Aside from all that coolness, the other great thing about
Morgain Le Fay, the Marvel version, is that she actually trained Dr. Doom in
magic.
Yeah, a lot of people tend
to forget that Dr. Doom is a wizard as well as a scientist and dictator but he
does often posses incredible mystic powers in addition to all his other
abilities and it’s thanks to Morgain Le Fay. After inventing time travel Dr. Doom went back and got Le
Fay to teach him magic in exchange for a favor he immediately reneged on. This all makes Morgain Le Fay both the
woman who trained Doctor Doom and one of his deadliest enemies as she still
seeks revenge for him running out on their deal.
The final name on our list is the White Witch, a bizarre but
compelling DC hero and long time ally of the Legion of Superheroes. I haven’t really discussed the Legion
on here before but, for the uninitiated, they were essentially the X-Men before
the X-Men. The team was a group of
super powered teenagers with colorful costumes and single service powers that
fought for truth and justice in the 31st century. The idea was that the various teens
were representative of a vast group of United Planets so they also had a number
of allies from other planets within the union. White Witch was one such ally and tied to the team’s
greatest enemy: Mordru.
Mordru was a crazy old rogue wizard from an entire planet of
magic users called Sorcerer’s World, whereas the White Witch was the planet’s
ruler. That’s honestly why she’s
as cool as she is as a character; she’s an incredibly powerful witch to the
point she’s the president of an entire planet of witches and actively teams up
with a bunch of superheroes to fight the terrorists her planet creates. She’s like a weird blend of Gandalf and
the President from Independence Day.
What I really like, though, is that she’s
never forced to abandon her feminine identity to achieve this level of political
and mystic power. Despite being
one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy everything about her is
distinctly coded as female rather than adopting the trappings of a male
sorcerer or head of state.
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