Broken Frontier

The Doctor is in!

After reading Brandon Seifert’s latest offering of Witch Doctor, I like to imagine an epic and polarized shouting-match taking place outside the doors of comic shops across the nation, with conservative and offended readers spouting slogans like “Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation is preposterous!  It’s blasphemous!  It’s profane!” at the top of their lungs, while loyal readers fire back supportive chants like “Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation is hilarious!  It’s a riot!” 

Now obviously, all of these terms could be readily applied to the incredibly bold Witch Doctor depending on your mindset.  If you believe yourself to be one of the rare readers blessed with an appreciation for black humor, however, Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation is an incredibly fun one-shot story that blends comedy, the occult, Egyptian gods, and medical science into a fast paced adventure against time and death itself!

In this all too brief adventure, Dr. Vincent Morrow finds himself caught between a new love interest’s transplant procedure gone horribly wrong, an infirm patient desperately seeking the occult doctor’s help, and the Egyptian god Osiris who is attempting to return to our world from the afterlife.  As outrageous as The Resuscitation’s premise is, Seifert continually packs page after page with comical moments that continually deliver laugh upon laugh, oftentimes at the expense of taboo topics.  The casual acceptance, for example, of magical “guard-goyles” (in fact a stillborn child resurrected to protect her mother) highlights the tone the entire issue.  As the issue continues, leading to the manifestation of Osiris, Dr. Morrow pulls no punches in his blanket statements about gods, believers, and the “parasitic” nature of faith, culminating in the most fun scene in the entire story.

Witch Doctor’s artist Lukas Ketner gets an enormous amount opportunity to display his skills in The Resuscitation.  It is a rare sight to see so many different styles packed into one short story, including ghosts, complete skeletal and organ systems, half-wrapped mummies, and the god of the undead, Osiris, himself!  Ketner’s art, without a doubt, is crucial to the fun and success of Witch Doctor.

Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation is a blast, especially for those undeterred from forbidden topics.  Brandon Seifert’s story is all too quick, and could have easily been expanded as Osiris took the stage, not a slight in the least however.  For anyone who has been interested in Witch Doctor, The Resuscitation is a perfect chance to introduce yourself to the Doctor, until his return in 2012.