Hecate’s Will #1: Giving Up, Vanishing Yourself (ADVANCED REVIEW)

Hecate’s Will is a comic that feels like a diary, like a recollection, like real life turned sequential fiction. From the sketched, foggy, enchanting NYC skylines, through the stinging lines that define the characters and give them the luxurious, artistic, shameless vibe, I can’t help but feel we’re assisting to someone’s life told through the motions of fiction, a secret revealed to the reader in a code that embellishes it. The dialogues, focusing mainly on the drama and personal, and the sepia, pink and purple coloring that fills the issue, add to that same sensation, told in the first page of the comic: “Isn’t art just proudly showing your scars to the world?”   

But, as the pages unfold and we understand Hecate more and where her decision to “be Rebecca” stems from, we get pulled to a disheartening conclusion, as the questions expressed on this comic through said decision streak intensely through Hecate’s queerness, and how she expresses said queerness through art, how her art is her. Her sense of “giving up” highlights doubts and fears barely talked about, less so deeply explored within queer media, and Iolanda here is venturing into the urge of vanishing, the tiredness of the constant fight, the struggle to “pass”, the endless road of acceptance that encourages you to conform to “the normal”. And it’s done in a brilliant way that lures you into the question, and will undoubtedly make you reminiscence if you had gone through that same question. 

This first issue ends on a note that makes my heart shrink, and one worth experiencing as a reader and letting it into your heart. The fight against shame and the criminalization of non-conforming everyday lives weights on everyone of us, and this comic presents only one decision. That of Hecate.