Season of the Witch
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It’s the last quarter of the year, which means back to back holidays. It’s currently the spooky season and we here at the PRL have been enjoying some Halloween entertainment that we’d like to share with you.
VIV: Halloween is my favorite holiday because it happens as the weather cools down and the leaves change. There’s nothing I enjoy more than snuggling up warm inside with a giant mug of cocoa while I watch scary movies or read scary stories. For the past decade or so, I’ve binged whole seasons of The Walking Dead around Halloween. It’s not the scariest show, it evolves into a commentary on human nature in a time of extreme crisis and I love seeing how the seasons and characters change. I’ve been reading through the comic at Roy’s suggestion and honestly it feels tame by comparison. Seeing zombies move as a mass is much more harrowing than the illustration. I wonder if I would enjoy it more if I read it before I watched it, but it is interesting enough that I plan to read it all.
Wes: I’d like to say that I watched Hocus Pocus 2 because my daughters wanted to see it, but honestly, I would have watched it even if my daughters had no interest in it. I remember Hocus Pocus from my childhood and seeing the Sanderson Sisters again took me right back to elementary school in the nineties. I completely forgot how much I enjoyed the movie, I hadn’t seen it since the nineties, but watching the new movie was fun. My daughters enjoyed it enough to watch the first one and both movies were replayed in my house practically on a loop for the weekend my daughters spent at my house. After watching so much witch content, I had to rewatch Wanda Maximoff’s evil turn as the Scarlet Witch in Multiverse of Madness. She was awesome and Sam Raimi directed her like a horror movie villain, it was just awesome.
Roy: I’ve been reading African American folktales, specifically ones dealing with witches and the supernatural. Since we decided that this Halloween was the Season of the Witch, I wanted to mine stories from the area for inspiration and there are some really interesting stories. Henry Louis Gates Jr and Maria Tatar’s The Annotated African American Folktales is a treasure trove of stories. I’ve also been reading Richard M. Dorson’s American Negro Folktales. I watched the same witch movies that Wes watched and it’s been fun combining the popular perception of the witch with one from a different time.
Max: Werewolf by Night! Watch it now, put this down for fifty minutes and be introduced to some of Marvel’s most interesting characters in an homage to horror movies when they were black and white and campy. Not only do we get the Werewolf by Night, Jack Russell, but we also get Elsa Bloodstone, and the real star of the show Man Thing. We read a lot of old Marvel Comics here at the PRL and my favorite are the horror comics. I never thought I’d see Werewolf by Night in the MCU and I think that they did it in a way that captures what’s best about the comics. Jack Russell isn’t a superhero, he’s a man who turns into a wolf and struggles to control himself in that form. He’s the Hulk without the superhero trappings and the character’s history in the comics is very interesting. Jack Russell’s father translated the Darkhold from the scrolls of the Satan worshiping mad monk who originally wrote it. I love the lore and I highly recommend both the MCU special and the comic book.
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Tonight:
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When the sun goes down, the night belongs to the moon. And in the darkness under the silver light of the moon, there is a sinister magic that traverses the darkness and can wreak havoc. In a new town, strange things are happening and reiterate the lesson to be on your guard during the hours under the moon.
The Witching Hour: “As Halloween approached, the neighborhood organized a block party, and in the lead up to the day, Luca held a meeting at his house. Most everyone from the neighborhood was there on the patio next to the swimming pool and Luca stood before the rows of lawn chairs with his wife.”
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Miriro is a witch with ambition and she has a plan to bring about the Witch Moon, a very rare occurrence that has not happened in centuries. She makes her plans in the woods where dark shadows form around her and she basks in the light of the moon.
Witch Moon: “Miriro had a smile on her face that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Her face was angled, harsh ones at the tip of her nose and chin, and at the height of her cheek bones as she smiled with delight at the gathering darkness in the large round clearing. She wore a simple black dress that stirred around her calves and she was barefoot, her shoulders exposed despite the chill in the air.”
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The razew on Earth are looking for allies in their conflict with the Master of Universal Arcana. They find an unlikely recruit in Kevin, from all the way back in issue two of this series, and it seems that they have an alliance with a witch.
Remarkable: “The grounds of the Museum of Aphro-Arcana are pristinely maintained and Gregory often frequents the garden behind the museum to sit with Wazad when the Master of Universal Arcana is away fulfilling his duties. Since his last return to the Museum, Gregory has been looking after the razew known as Tolot who was masquerading as an employee of COHH Inc.”
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PRL Serials 