The Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft
This second volume was published July 7, 2004 and featured a new Hellboy story by Mike Mignola as well as a sequel to Stray by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson story, a classic witch tale by Clark Ashton Smith illustrated by cover artist Gary Gianni, and an interview with Wiccan High Priestess Phyllis Currott.
In the introduction editor Scott Allie states that he was once again influenced by Mike Mignola in the choice of a theme for this second volume which is inspired by the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lord Dunsany and Weird Tales (for whom Smith formerly wrote).
The volume was nominated for the 2004 "Favorite One-Shot" Wizard Fan Award and Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson won the 2005 "Best Short Story" Eisner Award for the story Unfamiliar.
| Title | Creators | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MacBeth |
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| Artist Tony Millionaire adapts the meeting of the three witches from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” which includes the line, “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble,” and ends with, “By the pricking of my thumb something wicked this way comes.” | |||||
| The Troll Witch | Story & Art: Mike Mignola | ||||
| In the story Hellboy travels to Norway in 1963 to seek the assistance of the legendary troll witch, who in her youth had ridden into the trolls' den on the back of a goat armed only with a wooden spoon and defeated them, but now the trolls have returned and are hunting and killing once again. | |||||
| Mother of Toads |
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| In the story the young apothecary assistant Pierre Baudin of Les Hiboux, Averoigne is sent by his master Alain le Dindon to fetch a potent philtre from the witch, Mére Antoinette, but the repulsive hag uses her potions to seduce him. | |||||
| The Flower Girl |
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| In the story a girl pursues her misbehaving younger sister into a neighbour’s yard where she witnesses a witch cavorting with her familiars and is struck by a curse that can only be lifted by passing it onto her sister. | |||||
| The Gris-Gris | Story & Art: Jim & Ruth Keegan | ||||
| In the story Charles de Marlborough, son of a wealthy planter in Louisiana 1838, is challenged by an accomplished duellist and turns to a witch for help but spurns her offer of a gris-gris, which he later comes to regret. | |||||
| Golden Calf Blues |
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| In the story a young boy in Leviticus, Mississippi in 1936 purchases a guitar that once belonged to the reviled Bill Penny a finds that while it only plays blue notes it can still entice the people to the town to abandon the church and its reverend. | |||||
| The Truth About Witchcraft | Interviewer: Scott Allie | ||||
| Editor Scott Allie conducts an in-depth interview with H.P’s Phyllis Currott, J.D., who is an attorney, author, and practicing Wiccan High Priestess, in which they discuss the history, practice and beliefs of Wicca. | |||||
| Salem and Mary Sibley | Story & Art: Scott Morse | ||||
| In the story the infamous witch-trials of Salem, Massachusetts of 1692 are sparked when the slave girl Tituba is visited by the ghost of Mary Sibley who instructs her to bake the witch cake that indicates devilry afoot in the town. | |||||
| Unfamiliar Story |
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| In the story when Jack’s neighbourhood becomes overrun by mysterious black cats, the familiars of newly arrived witches, the Wise Dog returns to help to disrupt their demonic plan to summon Sekhmet and save the world. | |||||
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Famous quotes containing the words witchcraft, book, dark and/or horse:
“You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate. There is more
eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of
the French council.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The passion to condense from book to book
Unbroken wisdom in a single look,
Though we know well that when this fix the head,
The mind’s immortal, but the man is dead.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)
“In dark places and dungeons the preacher’s words might perhaps strike root and grow, but not in broad daylight in any part of the world that I know.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)