Comics / Manga

Laya, Witch of the Red Pooh: Volume 1

By Leroy Douresseaux
August 30, 2006 - 16:07

LAYA, WITCH OF THE RED POOH, VOL. 1

 

TOKYOPOP

CARTOONIST: Yo Yo

TRANSLATION: Sora Han

ENGLISH ADAPTATION: Jamie S. Rich

ISBN: 1595325484; soft cover; Comedy; Older Teen-16+

128 pp., B&W, $9.99

 

Han Laya is a young witch who lives in a small house in the magical forest known as Red Pooh.  Laya makes a living concocting potions for people in the nearby town (also called Red Pooh), and her potions come in novel shapes – usually in the form of small foodstuffs.  She also has a trio of unwelcome housemates.  There is Puss, the lazy, chain-smoking cat.  She reluctantly adopts Snowy, a boy she finds buried in a pile of snow by her front door, and he turns out to be something of a shape shifter because he’s actually a crow from the Forest of Winter.  Next is Niky the Fox, Laya’s longtime friend, also a witch, but with much less ambition than Laya.  Niky sits around, mooches off Laya for food and money, and sometimes steals her spells and potions.  With houseguests like that, the fun never stops.

 

LAYA, WITCH OF THE RED POOH, upon first glance, comes across as a comic for little kids, but with its surreal tone, mellow sexual innuendo, and “metaphorical” drug references, this is a book for high school students, although TOKYOPOP specifically suggests it for 16 years and older.  Laya, Witch of the Red Pooh is divided into 25 short stories, and while the setting is basically fantasy, the stories are strictly comic in nature.  That may be a problem for some readers.  They have to be willing to accept the fantastic concept.  Then, they must understand that Laya is actually a comedy, and it is merely dressed in the genre of fantasy.  The witchcraft and magic is secondary to the slapstick humor, although much of the humor is derived from gags involving the misuse of magic.

 

The characters are mall punk types, and the book is like a mixture of the sitcoms “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” and “Friends.”  The art by the studio Yo Yo looks like Tim Burton and Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl).  Each story is only four pages long, and some of them even riff on fairytales (“Jack and the Beanstalk”) and movies (The Wizard of Oz).

 

And while I’ve said all this, Laya, the Witch of the Red Pooh is still somewhat difficult to describe.  It’s a neo-gumbo comic book.  It has the basic ingredients of a comic book, but with extras.  Thus, it is a comic book just the way one can have a seafood gumbo or chicken gumbo, but both are still gumbo.  You may like it… or not.  I did.

 

7 of 10

 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12