Review: Monstrous Baba Yaga

Witches have been featured in fairy tales and fiction for centuries. The most common themed witch is the mysterious witch in the woods, who eats children. In some of the earliest fairy tales, the witch served as a warning. Stories about the witch-as-hag demonized and punished women for attempting to exert power outside the bounds of the domestic sphere.Â Not so in Source Point’s Monstrous Baba Yaga.Â Â

Plot: The Baba Yaga witch is a mysterious old witch who lives alone in the woods in a cabin with a fence around it that is decorated with the skulls of those who have wronged Baba Yaga.Â She as been content to live out the last of her days, until three witches break into her home in order to: destroy her possessions; they steal her powers; and they killed her cat.Â Of course Baba Yaga can’t just let it go, so she tracks them to a Witches Convention in England. She enlist the help of an inventor named Olga to build some sophisticated weaponry, to aid her (now that she is powerless). With these new weapons she endeavors to travel from her secluded woods in Russia to England to quench her thirst for vengeance.

As for the art by Stan Yank, you know how some books have a really good cover, but the interiors are totally different and don’t really match? Not here. Yank’s interior are really detailed and captured a dark grimness in some panels ,and the joyous murderous elation of the witch in others.

Best Panel: I was a little confused by the reference, but there is a small panel where Baba Yaga faces off against the Medusa.Â I’m confused because I thought Medusa was a demi-god monster. Either way its a sweet looking panel.

Final Verdict: It was straight up witch on witch violence.Â The callbacks to some of the more commercially known witches was definitely appreciated. There is a really great easter egg panel, thats sort of a roster call for a who’s who in the witching world, and some who may not have been so apparent.Â Â It is a shame that is only a one shot.Â Though there were indications toward the end of the book that Source Point may allow for some stories later on down the line.Â I hope that’s definitely the case.

SCORE: 4 stars out of 5.

Written by Gregory Wright
Colors by Robert Nugent
Letters by Dave Sharpe
Art by Stan Yak
By Source Point Press
Release Date 2/26/2020