Written & Pencilled by Ted Naifeh / HC / Abrams Books
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10th June 2022 (Released 28th October 2021)
The Pitch: When a series of high school pranks get out of hand, teen witch Faye Faulkner is the only one who can solve the case in this spooky YA graphic novel! Faye isn’t popular, and that’s just fine by her. She spends her lunches at the Loser Table with the other social rejects, aka her best friends, and brushes off the uninspired taunts from the cool kids. But when lonely freshman Cody finds her way to Faye’s corner of the cafeteria, it sets off a peculiar chain of events . . . To Cody’s surprise, these kids aren’t so bad; an overdramatic theatre nerd, a handicapable girl in a wheelchair, an overweight boy, and Faye, who comes to school every day dressed like a witch. But it’s no costume, Fay really is a witch! While high school can be hell for many reasons, this year the ante has been raised when a series of pranks swiftly go from mischievous to downright dangerous. From the lowliest debate team nerds to the prom queen, no one is safe, not even the teachers... Witch for Hire is a gothic whodunnit about resilience, magic, and the power of friendship.
There's a fine tradition of high-schoolers meeting supernatural threats or having lives tinged with magic in fiction. From Buffy to Harry Potter, these works allow us to reconnect with the pain of growing up whilst our avatars battle creatures from beyond and discover strange powers that synch up with the speed of their puberty. High School is hell, much more so, it seems than in my day when we all thought we'd be living in a John Hughes movie. Time moves on and the nature of harmful things on impressionable young minds changes. Now there are more insidious threats creeping up on kids. And that threat is the Internet!
there are tenuous friendships that feel like they could break at any minute
Naifeh, the one-man show who created this excellent book finds new allegories for the agony of peer pressure, namely the social-media influencer who may not be all she seems. It's a fun take in a dark book (this is definitely one for older teens), one that hooks into the audience's love and hatred for anyone who calls themselves 'an influencer' - surely the most annoying 'non-job' to appear in a sea of non-jobs borne out of the 21st century's rising 'me, me, me' generation - and plays it like a harp from hell! He commits to the idea and its development thoroughly. There are the standard high-school templates, like the bitchy cheerleader, the loser's table at lunch and the tenuous friendships that feel like they could stay forever or break any minute. But Naifeh gives everything a fresh coat of paint, tingeing it all with a certain tragedy. He presents the reader with both victims and strong leads but has the intelligence to suggest you don't have to root for any of them. Everyone is flawed here and that makes his characters utterly believable. In a world of online pranks and games, where idiots lick toilet seats during a pandemic, it's not a massive leap to see how easily people get suckered into doing someone else's bidding. The real curse running through the book is the lack of compassion we might be teaching younger generations from the get-go.
our titular witch has Carrie Fisher levels of sass and truth, making her instantly likeable but difficult to be around
Faye Faulkner, our titular witch, is a terrific creation. She has Carrie Fisher levels of sass and truth that make her instantly likeable but often difficult to be around. She only forms attachments she knows will be temporary. We wonder what in life made her this way and we find out as again, Naifeh makes compassion critical to survival. His other characters, whilst at first seemingly like archetypes have a lot more going on beneath the surface. Cody, her would-be best friend and our gateway into Faye's world in particular is a complex character who hides a lot of angst and secrets. You hope that by the end these two might team up for further adventures.
Naifeh really brings the mood home
Naifeh (who created Courtney Crumrin and Gloom Cookie) is a master of shadow and negative space to rival Chris Samnee. His faces are expressive and empathic, making you feel the turns and traumas the characters go through. His colours are spot on, helping the atmosphere he creates in his pencils go that final mile and bring the mood home Witch for hire is a book that manages to cover a lot of ground, metaphorically and will give readers a lot to chew on, regardless of their age. Or what peer group they're in!
You can buy Witch for Hire from Abrams & Chronicle books here, or from your local comic book shop.