There’s some combinations that are always going to work; individual item is incredibly wonderful on its own, and each immeasurably made better when combined with the other. Gin and lime. Bob and Ray. Bugs and Daffy. Jim Henson and Frank Oz.
Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock.
Larson is a writer and illustrator of comics that has spun many a quality tale. Mock is a comics artist and illustrator that has worked with everybody from Archie to The New Yorker Radio Hour. Together, they made the wonderful Four Points books in 2016 and 2017, and since not long after have been working on their next collaboration.
Salt Magic is what The Wizard Of Oz might have looked like if it stayed on the sod-rich prairies instead of flitting off to a fairy kingdom. Based on character designs that Mock has posted over the years, I said it looked like a Hayao Miyazaki collaboration with Jeff Smith’s BONE; I was talking purely about visual aesthetics, but hell if that comparison doesn’t actually work on the story as well. Mild spoilers ahead, but not too much.
There’s a formula to a Miyazaki story — the protagonist (usually a young woman, 10-12 years old) gets swept up in the larger world outside her home. Magic and mundanity both exist but usually there’s a boundary between them, or the two domains are otherwise separate (for example, Spirited Away), or with one ascending the other fading (for example, Princess Mononoke) but some crossover still possible. BONE opted for a world where the fantastic and the ordinary exist and can be travelled between if only you’re willing to walk far enough¹, likely through some inhospitable terrain.
And in Miyazaki’s tellings, at least, the denizens of the magic lands aren’t malicious, per se, but may be misunderstood or have priorities and mores that are different enough at to make them seem antagonistic to the main character. Conflicts are more likely the result of ignorance or misunderstanding that actual aggression. Yes, this is oversimplified, but work with me.
Salt Magic is the story of an Oklahoma at the end of the Great War where there are still witches with very specific domains — the salt witch that wields the titular magic, a sugar witch, the mention of crystal witches — that most people seem to have just forgotten exist. Or maybe they’re just too isolated, to disinterested in the affairs of the ordinary world. To stray into their lands is to encounter risk, perhaps none greater than if they like you.
Which is what’s happened to multiple generations of twelve year old Vonceil’s sod-busting family, though nobody quite figures it out until she does. In her eyes, the greatest crime is that her beloved older brother is returned from war and settling down with a wife who commits the greatest crime Vonceil can imagine: she makes him ordinary. Why couldn’t he have stayed in glamourous Europe and fallen in love with a beautiful nurse and stayed there and she could visit him in that far-off, nigh-magical place?
There’s a saying about getting what you wish for. Vonceil’s brother, Elber, would be the classic hero that leaves home for adventure and returns, but he didn’t find adventure; he found two years of grinding hell in the trenches and carries scars (both visible and invisible) for his troubles. Unlike the Campbellian hero, he hasn’t returned home having achieved a great quest and saved anything or achieved great wisdom; you could say he descended to an underworld of sorts. But as it turns out he did cross paths with a witch, a salt witch, and she loves him though he has spurned her, and the spring that sustains the family farm will run only with salt water until he loves her again.
Did Vonceil’s wish kick all of this into gear? Was it her that caused this to happen? Whether that’s the case or not — and to my eye it’s nicely ambiguous — she figures it’s her job to fix it, as she’s the only one that can see it’s a curse in play and not bad luck. She’s young enough, starry-eyed enough, focused on the horizon enough to slip into the territory of witches and find a way to bargain, to free her brother and maybe unravel her family’s history with witches in the bargain. She pays a price and learns the meaning of sacrifice along the way, but nobody ever quite realizes what she did to bring about peace between the two worlds.
Larson’s writing is sharp and subtle, creating characters in broad strokes and then filling them in with quirks and slowly-revealed detail until they are as complete any any of the great characters in the famous stories. Dorothy, Gawain, Peach Boy, Anansi, the Witch Of The Waste, Ged, Granma Ben, Nausicaä, she’s all of them and more.
Mock’s artwork is the best of her career, with clean, engaging character designs with magnificently expressive faces. They sit in their environments with a sense of heft, and both motion and the effects of magic move about on the page in a manner that’s instantly understandable. Mock and Larson were a formidable team on Four Points; they are five years better here. The only question left when you finish Salt Magic is when they will work together again, and how much better they will be individually and together.
Salt Magic is published by Margaret Ferguson Books and is available wherever books or comics are sold. It’s a magnificent read for anybody old enough to keep their attention through a 200+ page story.
Spam of the day:
Hey! gary.tyrrellyou block me on Whatsapp?! – I am hurt.
The thing I am most upset about in this pornspam is the assumption that I would use Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook, in the first place. Ew.
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¹ Which Miyazaki dabbled in with Kiki’s Delivery Service, where witches just exist in this Europe where World War II never happened and to a lesser degree Laputa where the magic is actually a secret, forgotten technology that proves Clarke’s Law.
