Witch Doctor is a horror comic book series written by Brandon Seifert and illustrated by Lukas Ketner. It follows the adventures of Dr. Vincent Morrow and his assistants Eric Gast and Penny Dreadful.
This works contains examples of:
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: Averted. During an attack by Deep Ones, Vincent tosses Eric a tranquilizer rifle. Eric's response: "Never throw a gun at me again." Emphasis in the original. We're given a vivid demonstration why later, when Eric shoots a Deep One with it at point blank, and the dart punches clear through its neck.
- Bubble Boy: Vincent references this when dealing with a possessed boy. He eventually builds magic sigils around the boy's house to keep out demons until a proper cure can be found.
- Cool Sword: Vincent's red "scalpel", which needs to be taught how to defeat a particular type of foe. It's also Excalibur, and only he can pull it out of something that it's been stabbed into.
- Death of a Child: The babies replaced by the "cuckoo faerie".Vincent:
Want to hear a dead baby joke? - Eldritch Abomination: The Archaeons.
- Excalibur: Vincent's scalpel. He's prety sure this makes him The Chosen One.
- Fish People: The fish-people are a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Deep Ones.
- Food Chain of Evil: Penny Dreadful is a cryptophage: a monster whose diet consists entirely of other monsters.
- Genius Bruiser: Eric can hold his own equally well in a fight or a medical exam.
- Kryptonite Factor: Vincent usually tries to find a monster's one true weakness to defeat them. For the fish-people, it's antibiotics.Vincent: A monster I can kill with penicillin. I love my job.
- Mad Scientist: Vincent hates being called this, but it's not exactly hard to see why.
- Magic Versus Science: Averted. The very first thing we see Vincent do is order a victim of a demonic attack to go to the hospital and get a CT scan to check for a concussion. Also, Vincent is presumably a certified medical doctor, and he approaches his magic in a very scientific manner.
- Magitek: Vincent takes a rather modern approach to magic, dispensing many spells into swallowable pills and performing aura readings with a MRI-like device powered by crystals consecrated to the four cardinal directions.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Penny Dreadful. Although her real name is Penelope.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires are parasitoid creatures residing in the innards of its human hosts.
- Religion of Evil: The fish-people worship the Archaeons, which Vincent speculates is a result of interbreeding with the more religious humans. Their relationship was more "symbiotic" than "worshipful" in the beginning. And humans do worship them more religiously.
- Semper Fi: Subverted. Eric's a Navy veteran, not a Marine.
- Two Beings, One Body: Penny is inhabited by the spirits of Penelope and the creature that possessed her. They tend to disagree on how to operate the body.
- Weaksauce Weakness: What kind of monster gets defeated by antibiotics, anyway?
- Wolverine Claws: Penny can develop claws that can be used violently, or as giant syringes for tranquilizers.
