By Hana Zittel Bimbo Agitprop by Raquelle Jac Surrounded by fanatical evangelical Christianity, backwards viewpoints and constant abuse, Raquelle Jac’s upbringing in Midland, Texas was isolated and fear-filled. The child of divorced parents, Jac mostly lived with her mother, a woman suffering from a myriad mental illnesses. Prone to religious fervor, conspiracy theories and insecurity, she subjected Jac to her diverse range of emotions, crises and fabricated remedies. Believing that the cause of sin and almost any other illness was caused by worms or parasites, she insisted on bleach baths for herself and Jac. An Everclear-Blood Machine and Ozone Maker were two of the strange appliances her mother insisted would purify and aid them, despite the extreme proven dangers. When Jac went to visit her father, what would hopefully serve as a reprieve from the constant stress and chaos of her mother’s house, ended up being in many ways worse and more physiologically damaging. Beyond her father’s direct verbal abuse, matters were made worse when he remarried a true evil stepmother. Manipulative and horrifyingly dark, Jac’s stepmother found every opportunity to control and berate her, going so far as to suggest she end her life during many interactions. In a story fit for a fairytale, but without the happy ending, Jac’s stepmother stole her prom dress to prevent her from going and returned it to the store, buying something for herself instead. When Jac would plead with her father to come to her aid, he would ignore or deflect these incidents and at the very worst, join in with his new wife. Marked by extreme turmoil, Jac’s graphic memoir is also a story of survival, of finding tiny glimpses of a life beyond childhood where she could find her way and her people. Jac’s visual style is raw, sometimes exaggerated, and honors the underground comics of the 60s and 70s, conveying the range of traumatic and tumultuous events covered in Bimbo Agitpop. In this truly ambitious memoir, Jac manages to maintain such a sense of candid storytelling throughout her book that each tale remains completely captivating. Bimbo Agitpop is Raquelle Jac’s debut full-length book and marks her as a new force in the comic medium. The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, Translated by Martin Aiken “And they read: In this dusk of the world, when sin is flourishing on every side and in every place, when charity is growing cold, the evil of witches and their iniquities superabound. And they read: Where there are many women, there are many witches.” In 1621, four women were found guilty of witchcraft. Among them, Christenze Kruckow, a noblewoman by birth, had previously escaped this accusation when living in Funen, Denmark. There, Anne, a woman she lived with, had lost all of the many children she had birthed, most not living beyond a few days. Suspecting the cause being the devil living amongst them, Anne saw Christenze as the likely candidate as she was unmarried, and clearly jealous of the wed Anne. Before any punishment or trial, Christenze flees Funen to Aalborg and amasses a new community of women as friends in the town. They spend their evenings together, gossiping and sharing wine, and she falls in love with a woman named Maren. When the local pastor grows suspicious and angry about his wife attending these gatherings, he moves to accuse Christenze of witchcraft. Narrating this novel is a wax doll created by Christenze and carried by multiple characters throughout the story. The doll has otherworldly seeing powers, understanding politics, interpersonal relationships, and the ways of the natural world. Inconspicuously listening to and retelling all these events, the doll may have been created for innocuous reasons, or for something more nefarious. The Wax Child is peppered with sections of spells adapted by Olga Ravn from “so-called black books, grimoires and other such works, sometimes bearing the name Cyprianus, dating variously to the period 1400-1900.” This, like the actions and gatherings of the women and the creation of the doll, remain nebulous. Were they witches or were they simply women gathering out of companionship and finding ways to pass the time with games? The Wax Child is eerie, grungy, brutal and a literary triumph providing a gripping fictionalization of the era of witch trials. No. 151
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