SOMETIMES I AM A GOD
SOMETIMES I AM A GATEWAY
SOMETIMES I AM A GHOST

A Lisa Frank Holy Mountain. Or The Labyrinth starring the cast of Adventure Time.

The Witch’s Egg is an epic queer love story between a catwitch and a troubled birdgirl who is forbidden from anything joyful. Despite birdgirl’s hesitancy, they come together and lay an egg. In Eraserhead-level anxious anticipation of their child, the birdgirl fears their baby is a ‘maggoty worm’ with ’speckled throat’ and “the sorrowed song he sings brings an end to all things.” The lovers quarrel over whether or not to destroy what they’ve created and the remaining pages follow the catwitch as she absconds with the egg and journeys on trippy Odyssey to find safety.

These pages are filled with magic and originality. The artwork is truly beautiful, a horrible macabre juxtaposed with bright rainbow colors. The graphics are often rendered in a minimalist way but made complex by a great amount of detail. I love her color theory and line work but perhaps the best element of Todd’s art would be her flow, how she manipulates elements on the page to move you around the page to magical and dizzying effect.

If you come from the writer world and like Akwaeke Emezi, Joanna Ruocco, or Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, I’d suggest you check out this graphic novel. If you’re from the art world, you’ll enjoy this book if you are fans of Takashi Murakami, Harry Clarke, or Kay Nielsen.

Throughout The Witch’s Egg, trials of love (including self-love) are underscored by a constant underlying fear that inside the core of you is something horrible and rotting that will open its eyes and ruin everything you love. It is filled with haunting symbols, equals turns at hope and horror, and a dread inherited from traumatic childhood that love won’t be enough. In the end, though, Dodd shows her readers that there is a magic alive in love, even when that love dies.

In my dreams, in the end
I love you until I am
laid in the wormy dark.