A review by mildmay
Hex Wives by Ben Blacker, Mirka Andolfo, Marissa Louise

3.0

I originally rated this a four-star read because I liked the concept and had a fun time reading it, but after sleeping on it I realized that this is... actually kind of bad!! The story starts off strong, setting up witches that reincarnate in different time periods and their never-ending war against men who try to kill and control them. (Women with agency against the patriarchy, in very clear terms.) Sounds like fun! HOWEVER, as soon as the story enters the modern day, the power of the plot shifts completely to the men, who have imprisoned the witches and taken away their power with... their love?? And it's 2008 but it's also the 50s? Very little is done to explore or explain this weird setting or the way in which the men's "love" has somehow suppressed these women's power, so the story mostly turns into showing how oppressed these women are in their new lives. This drags on for some time until everything turns around very quickly at the end, giving the witches back their power and allowing them to become their true selves. This is clearly meant to be a strong setup of the newly-made modern and powerful witches (the characters I came here to read about and didn't get at all) going into the next volume, but why waste the whole first book on setup when you could just start at the good part?
Overall I think this comic had a great concept, but with the failures in editing themselves and the strange lack of awareness in setting up these strong women but giving all the narrative power to the men, it really fell flat for me. The 50s-esque atmosphere also made for a very joyless color palette and overall setting, so even though the art was nice it was very... boring. Nice try but next time don't let a man write this.