Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation #1

Written by Brandon Seifert
Art by Lukas Ketner

I thought that the first volume of Witch Doctor was a very cool comic - it posits a world where doctors investigate, diagnose, and treat infections and chronic conditions that we usually ascribe to magic.  Things like vampirism, changeling babies, and the other things that populate horror stories all have a medical basis in this comic, although Dr. Morrow uses magic to combat them.  It's a neat take on Dr. Strange, and it works very well in Seifert and Ketner's hands.

This one-shot helps fill in the gap between the end of the first mini-series, and the start of the second, which will be published at some point in 2012.  The comic starts with a familiar image - a man wakes up in a bathtub full of ice cubes with a bandaged wound in his side.  We immediately assume that the man was drugged and had his kidney stolen, but what we learn as the story progresses is that he has, in fact, been given a transplant.  The new kidney has some divine origins, and this poor guy is now involved in an experiment conducted by an unlicensed necromancer.

Luckily, the good Doctor intervenes, and as usual, weirdness ensues.  This comic is pretty funny in parts, and maintains the self-aware nature of the first volume.  Ketner continues to enjoy designing weird and wonderful medical devices, just as Seifert has fun coming up with the explanations for things that the Doctor provides.  Witch Doctor is a good read.