The Witching Hour by Jeph Loeb and Chris Bachalo

When I returned home to France for a few weeks last year, I dug through my collection of old books, especially the ones I bought when I lived in the U.S. at the turn of the century, and I brought some of them back with me to Japan. When you think about it, it’s crazy how much these books have traveled (but it’s probably nothing compared to some of the CDs I own, and I’m not even including the traveling they did before I bought them).

Among the books I brought back was a short graphic novel that I would have almost forgotten existed, except for some quotes from the book that I still use sometimes. For example:  “I’ll try anything twice on the off-chance that I may have screwed it up the first time.” (one of the very first lines of the story – note that I don’t actually live by it, I just like the quote, that’s all)

This book is called

The Witching Hour

It was written by Jeph Loeb with art by Chris Bachalo (inks by Art Thibert). It was published by Vertigo in 1999-2000.

It seems that it was never a big success and remained somewhat obscure despite the popularity of its authors.

It’s a full story, but I won’t lie, it feels a bit incomplete, especially in terms of character development. When you’re done reading it, you can’t help but feel like it’s some sort of “pilot episode” of a series that never was. And that’s probably what happened. Maybe it would have become an ongoing series if this first story had been more successful, but it was not meant to be. This is just an assumption on my part.

But I’m rambling, and I haven’t even started to tell you what it’s about.

Well, from the title you won’t be surprised that it’s a story about a group of witches. It takes place mostly in the present day (with a few flashbacks that take us back centuries) in New York and sometimes in Nevada.

The members of the coven are usually referred to by their color code names: White, Gray, Black, Blue, and Red. The story focuses mostly on White and to some extent on Gray (who often acts as the narrator). The others are rather secondary. It’s because of this I have a feeling that more stories focusing on each of them were planned for the future, but never happened. Maybe.

Even though both authors come from the superhero industry, it’s not really a superhero story, yet it sometimes uses elements and tropes from the genre.

The witches aren’t villains, but they’re not really heroes either.
They tend to help people they meet who deserve help. They do this mostly by granting wishes, but one of the morals of the story could be: “Be careful what you wish for.” They also punish some people who deserve it.

In terms of atmosphere, it sometimes feels like it could come straight out of a Neil Gaiman book. It really has a similar vibe, and the fact that Chris Bachalo also drew some Sandman episodes added to that feeling for me. I forget if he drew anything from the main series, but he did the Death miniseries. Oddly enough, that was my introduction to Sandman.

 

The Art

I’d say the art is some of Chris Bachalo’s best.
I remember buying the comic just from seeing his name on the cover and flipping through a few pages.
It can be dark, sometimes a little confusing and messy in appearance, but each page is structured to serve the story and nothing is uncontrolled. Most of the pages are literally works of art. But maybe I’m biased; I’ve been a fan of Bachalo’s since the early 90s.

The Story

I’m not going to skirt around it: it’s quite complex and hard to follow at times. Well, the story itself is not that complex, the narration is. You follow several plots at once, and the structure, as well as the chronology, is quite fragmented.

It all makes sense in the end and each plot point has a proper conclusion, but you have to accept to be confused along the way. It’s not perfect, and sometimes I get the feeling that Jeph Loeb tried to bite off more than he could chew (I can relate to that with my fiction writing), but it’s still worth reading if you enjoy stories that aren’t spoon-fed to you.

With that said, my advice would be to either read the whole story in one sitting if you can (two-three hours, maybe?) or to read it a second time shortly after finishing it.

That’s why I think it’s good and interesting, but maybe not a masterpiece. If it were a masterpiece, you wouldn’t need that second reading for everything to make sense.

But overall, and with that caveat in mind, it’s really worth reading, and it’s a shame it wasn’t more popular when it came out.90s.

 

 

Fun fact: When I wrote the first draft of this post, I wrote that I wasn’t sure if the series was still available, but after looking online, I realized that DC Comics released a new edition no later than… four days ago (it came out on November 26th, 2024). So, if you’re interested, you know what to do!

 

 

 

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