'Unfamiliar.'
Indeed.For it is a bizarre, abstract, oblong, yet colourful and shiny witchy comic. Likewise, it is genuinely, terrifically funny.
The art style took me a while to get used to, but it grew on me eventually, and now I find it to be so charming. It's expressive - the characters' big eyes have pupils that hilariously display their emotional states via emoji-like imagery - over-the-top, and cartoony.
The closest comparison I can think of in terms of its style and humour is 'Adventure Time'. Also another witch graphic novel, 'Beetle & the Hollowbones'. And 'Kiki's Delivery Service' (Kiki even makes a cameo on one panel! The comic knows where it's at!)
'Unfamiliar' is about a witch, Planchette, and her familiar, Winston the rabbit, who make a new start, moving to a new town, into a new house, which unfortunately is haunted - deadly seriously haunted - so Planchette tries to find solutions to exorcise the ghosts that inhabit it. She'll need help, since she is a kitchen witch only good at food spells.
Along the way she meets other witches, and makes friends with them, including Pinyon, a nervous, almost magicless wreck who actually comes from a rich and powerful family and has a daunting (and haunting, heh) legacy to live up to. Then there's Babs, a pink, shy southern belle-like siren, who is always full of, and surrounded by, sparkles and love hearts. Everything I just described about her is literal. Planchette's fourth witch friend is Sun, the relationship of which is developed slowly and with much reluctance on Sun's part. The exact opposite of her name, Sun is a moody, grumpy goth woman whose one big red eye is in her hair, at the top of her head, and she works everywhere in town, all the time. She has a dark secret, and she and Babs are totally in love with each other.
Four witches - Planchette is the blue one (blue hair and yellow irises) and also the short one, who has the white rabbit familiar, Winston; Pinyon is the white and yellow one (white dress and hat, yellow hair, and blue irises) who resembles a tall, sickly bird, and has the white pigeon familiar, Ari; Babs is the pink one (pink everything, except for her white, though blushing, skin, and the white on her pink checkered dress, and a black belt, and a black bow in her hair), who has the one-eyed black cat familiar, Marlow; and Sun is the dark one (black hair and one big eye with a red iris), who has the lizard... crocodile... thing familiar, Edgar... we never see the two interact, or in the same scene, as they evidently don't get along.
Sometimes these little cartoon women are together, but mostly they are off in pairs on separate adventures, having nothing to do with exorcising the many, many ghosts from Planchette's new house. But it is all-around wacky, exciting, witchy fun. It's magical slice-of-life, only not really.
Read it yourself and you'll see what I mean.
'Unfamiliar' is wickedly sweet, cute, colourful, bedazzling, funny, and a touch morbid and creepy. I'd say it is suitable for children. There are Halloween themes throughout. A tall skeleton doctor is included, plus a faery realm!
It's sapphic as all get-out, as well.
'Unfamiliar' - Unfathomable. Unruly. Uncanny. Unforgettable. Unique.
Recommended.
I'll be adding it to my extensive witch comic book collection.
Final Score: 4/5
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