Warning: The following preview contains MATURE content
A world of witches brainwashed into playing obedient wives for controlling husbands. Eerily ever-present cats. Plus, "the creepiest sex scene in all of comics." After just two issues, Hex Wives has quickly become one of DC's most enigmatic horror comics in years.
It's also one of their most timely, imagining a world of witches at war with men who decide that "the women are too powerful. They must be tamed." That's where the Hex Wives story began, but our exclusive preview of Hex Wives #3 proves that controlling a single witch is damn near impossible. Keeping an entire coven from realizing their true power? That's a job that even magic couldn't pull off. Especially not now that the 'Mother of Witches' has broken through their haze of suburban life.
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Along with our preview of Hex Wives #3, series writer Ben Blacker helps to set the scene for what looks to be a major chapter in this twisting tale of brainwashed witches, and their slowly but surely loosening handcuffs. And after Hex Wives #2 ended with Isadora coming face to face with a surprise resident in her own home, Blacker confirms he's drawing from some of the most disturbing horror classics to bring this next chapter to life.
If you've already binged The Chilling Tales of Sabrina and the new Charmed reboot, we can promise you one thing. You're going to like Hex Wives... but that doesn't mean you're anywhere near prepared for it:
Hex Wives, for the uninitiated, is about a coven of witches who are brainwashed by a cabal of frightened, threatened men in order to become suburban housewives. It's Bewitched plus The Stepford Wives, to be glib. It's a horror story about gender politics, to be slightly less glib.
The beginning of issue #3 finds our coven leader, Isadora, having stumbled upon a secret room in her house where she discovers a woman held captive. The issue was inspired by Jane Eyre, Rosemary's Baby and about a hundred other things I've been thinking about these past few years. As you can see in these few pages, I'm putting everything I care about, everything that scares me, into this comic. Luckily, I have incredible collaborators in artist Mirka Andolfo, colorist Marissa Louise, and editors Molly Mahan and Maggie Howell who push me to go deeper, further, weirder, creepier.
Mirka brings so much humanity to these characters that I've grown quite attached to them. And Marissa has designed this brilliant, thoughtful palette that differentiates the witches' 'woke' state from their mind-controlled one. In these pages, those two states mix for the first time, and the colors guide you through that while also creating an unsettling atmosphere.
Hope you like these pages and this book. All of us are proud of the work, and we hope to tell these stories for a long, long time. Our witches are, after all, immortal.
With that set-up straight from the issue's writer, feast your eyes on the preview pages for Hex Wives #3 below:
- HEX WIVES (2018) #3
- Published: January 2nd, 2018
- Writer: Ben Blacker
- Art: Mirka Andolfo
- Cover: Mingjue Helen Chen
- At last, Izzy learns the truth about herself and the other women of Desert Canyon, but it will take more than self-awareness to break the spell cast on the neighborhood.
Hex Wives #3 will be available on January 2nd, from DC Comics.