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The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen – Witch Doctor Mal Practice #5

Published Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:30:36 -0500

Louis Falcetti writes for Bleeding Cool;

"He killed me Mal. He killed me with a sword." What is it with sword death these days? It seems that everywhere you look on the comic stands someone is getting murdered with a sword. From The Unwritten to Batman, Inc. to Angel & Faith to Witch Doctor: Malpractice, the sword is truly mightier than the pen, except these are all ink and paper swords created by men with pens. Really a chicken/egg sort of deal, except not.

This penultimate issue of Malpractice has Morrow astrally projecting inside of himself in a far out Fantastic Voyage meets Altered States meets…well…Supernatural and House, as always, kind of way. Although should mention Fringe as well since the helmet Morrow wears looks like something that Walter Bishop would cook up with Jim Henson after a night of heavy LSD use together.

The problem with The Hobbit (by the way, if you were wondering) is that three hours of action scenes is exhausting, boring and impossible to get emotionally invested in. Witch Doctor sets up the action this issue by alternating back and forth from the astral plane to Morrow's lab, creating this beautiful juxtaposition of crazy, fantasy horror with two kind of goofy dudes bickering and freaking out. The interplay is so satisfying (in the way that Hobbit isn't) in that it keeps the reader from getting bored with either storytelling device, crazy violence and two guys talking. Plus it allows us to get closer to the characters, another satisfying effect from character development.

I know that Seifert is a fan of Supernatural, it's clear as this story arc nears it's conclusion. We feel the never say die energy and eagerly await Morrow's zero hour, ass saving, ultraviolent medical revenge as he finally turns the tables on the honest to god mooks who have been tormenting him so. The issue has that Supernatural vibe of righteous dudes using slightly less than righteous methods to dispatch the seriously unrighteous. However I don't know if Seifert is a fan of Tenacious D though I feel he might be after Morrow's "WITH TELEKINESIS!" battle cry.

This issue sees the gang back together, after pages of Ketner delivering his usual blend of heart stopping, brain tickling mayhem. Come to think of it, Ketner gets quite a lot to play with this issue with Morrow getting a near full use of his bag of tricks as well as the whole team mounting up.

The next issue looks to be full of everything we love about the book: demons, witches, sass, back talk, steampunk looking hypos and that sexy killer pathologist, hello meow. Also while we're talking shop, whoever controls the Supernatural comic book rights, maybe consider giving Mr. Seifert a whack at it, he's done bang up business on other established TV/Movie properties (and he seriously loves the show as much as me)(which is evident from Witch Doctor is the point that ties it together).

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