Ageless Vengeance Upon Oppression

             For this week's story, I read the complete works of James Robinson's 1994 "Witchcraft" series; comprised of three separate graphic novel volumes. The majority of the novels center around magical rebirth and various separate but similar searches for vengeance against embodiments of abusive dominance. These plots are rather obvious metaphors for the tendency for powerful figures in history, (in this novel often displayed as demonic-worshiping sexually abusive men) to abuse their position.

           The stories' main characters all are not often treated as individuals, but more so representations of relatable positions to convey the themes explored. The protagonists are always relatively submissive beings, be them young boys trying to prove themselves or women who are seen as nothing more than child bearers; while the antagonists in these stories are all powerful men driven by their own ambition, greed, and lust to take anything and everything they desire regardless of who gets hurt as a result. Even the ambivalent goddesses who tell the tale take physical reincarnations throughout the novels, becoming kindly nuns or hospital patients or whoever the character, (or the audience) might interpret as sources of purpose or advancement. Each of the characters in this story figuratively and literally are just interpretations of the same base characters that are seen in stories throughout history.

             Although the central theme of women trying to survive and take back control of their lives in a man-central world is incredibly prevalent throughout the first part of the story, the second and third installments broaden that theme to include any and all that would be subject to oppression. The series as a whole tells on how any and all those who receive hardship, be them young or old, man or woman, deserve retribution and vengeance upon those who would commit such heinous acts. The stories explored in the "Witchcraft" series illustrate people who, when given opportunity, do what they feel is right in correcting the various wrongs put upon them by evils around them.