Comic Strip Review: Hooky by Miriam Bonastre Tur
Daniela “Dani” and Dorian Wytte are twelve-year-old twins who are looking forward to their first day at witch school. Except they’re late and miss the only departure of the bus. Rather than go home and admit the problem to their parents, the twins appeal to their Aunt Hilde to tutor them. One of their chores is delivering a prisoner, an enemy of the witches, to the secret gaol run by the magic users. It’s also where they’re hatching dragons, and Dorian accidentally makes it look like he’s stealing one, which gets the pair branded as traitors.
Fleeing, the children find refuge with the soothsayer Pendragon and his ward Nico. Pendragon agrees to tutor them himself, but he has ulterior motives. Dorian is a book-smart kid who can perform spells correctly on the first try, but is bad at flying, swimming and anything else involving vigorous motion. Dani is immensely powerful for her age, but her spells often go awry. She accidentally shrinks Nico for a long time when she meant to just weaken him a little. The kids also start a complicated relationship with Nico’s friend/rival Mark, who works at the local cafe.
Meanwhile, Princess Monica, age fourteen, is worried about the disappearance of her fiancé, Prince William, part of a rash of princely abductions. She decides to go off to search for him (he’s the prisoner from earlier as we find out much later) and consults Pendragon for his predictions. Monica winds up staying with Pendragon and studying magic along with the twins as this allegedly is the best way to find her missing fellow.
While the kids are studying, it turns out that the Wytte family is part of a faction among the witches to take over the kingdom as revenge for past wrongs done to their people. There’s a prophecy about a Witch King that will bring total war, and the witches presume they’re going to survive this and win.
This thick volume started as a web comic at the Webtoons site, and has been somewhat modified for the print version. I’d say the intended audience is middle-schoolers, with just enough darkness, and rather silly romance. The creator is Spanish, and the translation to English feels natural.
The setting is anachronistic; there are buses and airplanes and modern looking cafes, but swords are the primary soldier weapon and the kingdom is a fairytale monarchy. It’s never quite clear how magic works; genetics seems to have a lot to do with it, but some non-witch people can do magic. Witches primarily wear black, but this seems to be a cultural thing more than a requirement.
The children trade off being angsty, feeling inadequate, jealous or shut out. It gets a bit repetitive, but they are at an appropriate age for this sort of problem.
The art is nice, with mostly good use of color. Each major character has their own word bubble hue, which can get confusing when two characters have similar coloration.
The primary driver of conflict is the prejudice between non-magical humans and witches. Some witches have done terrible things with their magic, causing the public to distrust all witches and persecute them (at one point it was legal to execute witches by burning them), which in turn has soured many witches on non-witches, considering them inferior yet dangerous.
Content note: Prejudice leading to violence, deadly in at least one case. A witch kills children in the backstory, and we see remains. Middle schoolers familiar with darker fairy tales should be able to handle it, but younger or more sensitive readers might need parental guidance.
This is the first volume, with a second due out shortly. Recommended for fantasy-loving middle schoolers and up.
