Magic
Manga artist: Sole Otero
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Publication date: October 2025
Sole Otero’s 2023 graphic novel Witchcraft is a monumental work of historical fiction with a small touch of supernatural horror. The story revolves around three witches who came to Argentina with merciful intentions in 1768, but they still have to protect themselves from the explosive violence of society that hates them.
Witchcraft is primarily set in Buenos Aires, and the story is a jump between the historical period in which the witches were active and today, where the gender politics of their activities are much more complicated. Witches are easy to see as feminist saviors when running local Indigenous women’s clinics and shelter members, but their mercy is questioned by their magical nature. Instead of a feminist message, what magic offers is a fast-paced high-stakes tale about the cycle of abuse and the human costs of the sacrifices needed to survive by marginalized people.
The first chapter introduces the witch from the perspective of an aging millennial man who tells his friends a tall story that sounds like an urban legend if he didn’t actually experience it on his own. When his second floor neighbor suddenly begins to have constant (and extremely loud) sex, the man bets her apartment and learns that he is nothing but their landlord following the abandoned buildings in the neighbours where her boyfriend once thriving. What he thinks is there is incredible: a circle of women performing an occult ritual around the producer and unresponsive body of some naked men.
He excludes sleazy details from the stories he tells his friends, but the man is proud of this evening ritual. His obvious awakening is a bit pathetic, especially as his wife is busy with work and is not interested in him sexually or otherwise. As the male friend explains, this is partly due to his own fault for marrying a Catholic girl from high school, and the clever visual framing of Otero’s story allows readers to see the context of how and why the witch’s pledge locks up men just like he does.
While magic initially seems like a story about the power of a girl, each successive chapter adds new complexity to the concept of “power.” For example, in previous generations today, witches have adopted a girl who was horribly abused in a Catholic orphanage. This charity act is undoubtedly good, but it is up to the reader to decide whether the trauma of a girl justifies her decision to take part in a contract to receive a similar type of abuse. The ethics of this situation are further complicated by the fact that witches use wealth and longevity to monopolise the city’s real estate market, making it difficult for victims to escape influence.
Sole Otero’s boldly stylized, kinetic artwork brings justice to emotionally complicated stories about witches, cults, riots, discrimination, freedom, and flight. Each character in the vast cast is visually different as in each period. Additionally, each section of the story is narrated with a different voice with its own comic style, some of which are very creative.
I was particularly impressed by the chapter in which one of the male witch victims entered into a lengthy email conversation with a woman suffering from anxiety and was unable to leave the apartment. The windows in the email browser are open and spacious, despite the increasingly small panels of women’s daily activities. Unfortunately, this digital connection is insufficient to dispel the visual claustrophobia created by fears observed by hostile outsiders, and Otero’s panel highlights the darkness of their lives, nothing but still too weak to help each other.
Witchcraft is a massive book, but it moves quickly and moves the story forward with incredible momentum. Otero’s twist keeps readers guessing, prompting sympathy for one character before piloting the story in an astonishing new direction. Andrea Rosenberg’s translation is excellent, distinguishing between different characters’ voices and periods without relying on campy dialect.
Inspired by Mariana Enriquez’s unsettling magical realist fiction and the history of Julia Gufflerer, fans of horror comics feel at home in magic, boldly colorful and thrilling page-masters, and an unforgettable meditation on how the historic cycle of historical cycles echoes through modern Buenos Aires.
You can also check out exclusive excerpts on the beat.
Witchcraft is available from Fantagraphics.
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