ST304 Modern Eco-Horror and Folk Horror
Harrow County and Wytches
The chain on the page: a girl and her haints, a family and the woods, and what comics do with folk horror that film cannot.
Reading for this lesson
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The first arc.
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The whole series.
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To test on comics.
Introduction
Two comics brought folk horror to the page in the year the category was becoming a fashion. Wytches (Image, from 8 October 2014), by Scott Snyder, who had just left Swamp Thing, and Jock, moves a family to a small town where the woods take people who have been pledged[1]. Harrow County (Dark Horse, May 2015 to June 2018), by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook, follows Emmy, a girl in a rural county full of haints, who learns on her eighteenth birthday what she is[2]. Crook paints in watercolour; Jock draws in scratches and spatter.
Scovell's chain was built from film. This lesson tests it on comics and asks what the page adds: the panel as landscape, the gutter as isolation, colour as belief, the page turn as happening. It also asks what Snyder carried from the swamp to the woods.
Learning objectives
- Apply the chain to two comics and assess its fit.
- Analyse the two art styles as folk horror strategies.
- Trace Snyder's move from Swamp Thing to Wytches.
Key concepts
The chain on the page
Landscape is the panel's content; isolation is the gutter's work; belief is the caption's; the happening is the page turn's. Test the mapping on each comic. Where it fails, describe what the comic is doing instead.
Watercolour and spatter
Crook's Harrow County is soft, warm and full of light; Jock's Wytches is dark, scratched and violent. Ask what each style says about the land and its haints or wytches, and which is closer to folk horror's founding films.
Snyder's swamp
Snyder wrote Swamp Thing (ST301) and then Wytches. Ask what he carried: the woods as the Green's cousin, the family as the horror's centre, the pledge as the Rot. Is Wytches a Swamp Thing comic with the mythology removed?
Questions to think about while reading
- What is a haint, in Harrow County's own terms?
- What is the pledge in Wytches, and who makes it?
- What is the happening in each comic's first issue, and where does it fall on the page?
Things to notice
- Crook's lettering. He letters his own pages. What that does.
- Jock's double-page spreads. The woods as a wall.
- Both comics' rural America. The South and New England. Compare with American Gothic (ST203).
Reflection questions
- Which comic would Scovell include, and which would you?
- Is Harrow County a horror comic, or a coming-of-age story with haints?
Homework and tasks
Draft Assignment 1: Harrow County #1 or Wytches #1 with the chain, and with the ST104 vocabulary for what the page does that the chain does not name.
Next lesson
Last week: is Swamp Thing folk horror?
References
- Scott Snyder (writer), Jock (art). Wytches #1 to #6. Wytches, #1 to 6. Image Comics, from 8 October 2014.
- Cullen Bunn (writer), Tyler Crook (art). Harrow County #1 to #32. Harrow County, #1 to 32. Dark Horse Comics, May 2015 to June 2018.