#superfish comic

Do witches even have “family” as a concept? There are implications that suggest that witches may reproduce in ways that aren’t natural so much as artificial. Is that why witches seem to lack a protective instinct to care for their own? They find torture gratuitous, including when it is inflicted upon their children.

If witches do reproduce normally, do families function more as stewardships? What is the political framework they rely upon? Since witch names function more as titles, are children simply created and assigned to different “families” based on their abilities? Witches seem to want willing and obedient servants, which would explain why disciplinary action involves torture and submission. “Parents” would want their “children” to respect their position as being at the bottom of the familial hierarchy, and to prove themselves as worthy by surviving in harsh conditions.

Superfish is aware enough of the concept of romantic relationships, that it is implied they exist at least in some form in Obscaria. If so, do they function more like contracts based on attraction or power, rather than any genuine feelings?

Moreover, what is it about Superfish that makes him different? He clearly is unlike other witches in this regard—he finds such simple contact meaningful. He wants to be a part of a family.

Is this something that is innate to him, an anomaly present since birth?

Or is it something he learnt through knowing someone else? Someone who was not a part of witch culture, and thus provided a completely different perspective?

A. The Origin of Superfish as a Comic

Superfish was conceived by pegl0 in 2018 in a dream, following which he immediately noted down the ideas he had to turn it into a complete story; you can find sketches of the characters from as early as 2019, I believe.

In its initial stages, the story was quite different from its current iteration—the characters were different in both appearance and personality, and it involved two different sub-plots taking place in two different time periods. On pegl0’s now defunct Patreon, you can find the following blurb on the premise of Superfish:

After the death of famous author Kim Dae-Jung, Soo-Yin discovers a secret manuscript of her grandfather’s untold life story about witches, hitmen and a rubber duck.

In its current iteration, pegl0 has described Superfish as being a supernatural fantasy work with action, romance, and horror themes. Hence, the comic will feature graphic injuries.

Pegl0 decided to create his previous comic before Superfish to hone his skills; he has stated that it is a very challenging comic to make, and his previous attempts failed as his art needed to evolve. 

Pegl0 has conceived Superfish as spanning at least three (and optimistically four) seasons, with likely around 50 episodes each.

B. The Pieces of Media that Superfish is Inspired By

Back to the Future

While this likely held more true when the story had two different sub-plots spanning two different time periods, it is still notable in that DJ’s personality was partly inspired by Marty McFly. 

Howl’s Moving Castle (both the film and the novel)

Superfish’s character is heavily based off of Howl, while DJ’s is somewhat based off of Sophie. Their dynamic as they navigate the story is particularly inspired by Sophie and Howl’s dynamic in the novel the Studio Ghibli film is based on. Superfish, unlike Howl’s Moving Castle, focuses a lot more on magic and witchcraft; he has drafted his own “version” of witches for this comic.

Your Name, and Suzume

His art style and storytelling are quite inspired by Studio Ghibli works in general. 

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Much of the inspiration behind the illustration for the action scenes is derived from here. 

The Great Pretender

The art style was partly inspired by this. 

C. General Information on the Characters

Being Australian himself, pegl0 imagines all his characters as having an Australian accent. 

DJ can speak Hindi and English; his father was North Indian while his mother was South Indian. He wants to pursue teaching as a career. 

If Superfish were a human, he would either be a renowned chef who owns his own restaurant or a famous actor/model. 

While the story’s protagonist is always going to be DJ, some parts of the story will be shown through Superfish’s perspective.

D. What Is Next For The Superfish Universe

Obscaria is confirmed to be home to at least the following species:

Witches,

Werewolves,

Vampires,

Demons,

Fairies,

Sirens,

And trolls.

Taking the following facts into account,

Superfish has stated many times that he is the most powerful witch alive, a fact that the creator has confirmed as being accurate. It's not mere bragadocio.

He has also specified that a spell involving the removal of a witch's core has never been performed in history.

It was right after he performed this spell that Toppleprey, the red-eyed witch, called him a "dirty defect."

Witch society is highly militaristic and hierarchical, likely also lacking any family units analogous to the ones humans have.

Even witch names function more as titles.

Superfish has no qualms wiping people's memories, enchanting them, killing them if they wish to hurt him, etc. However, he was visibly concerned for DJ's health since the beginning of the events of the series.

He routinely refers to witches as something separate from himself, describing their behaviors in third person.

We can draw the following conclusions,

If Superfish is the first person in known history to perform a spell that can extract a witch's core, his levels of magical power are unbelievably high.

Superfish, being all of 19 years of age and yet so powerful, is definitely something that would not fly in a strictly hierarchical witch society where age is a defining factor in how powerful you are.

Superfish is much less likely than other witches to see killing as the only option in every situation. He isn't as species-ist as they are, having never absorbed their doctrines due to the alienation he faced growing up.

Thus,

There is something about the nature of Superfish's unbelievably high magical power that makes him a "defect" in the eyes of witch society.

The alienation he experienced within it has caused him to see himself as something separate from them, since he never fully absorbed their modes of operation or way or life.

While the above means he sports a "more" apparently moral outlook toward other life than most witches do, it is NOT the reason for why he is considered a "defect."

Based on the above, there are some more points of note we can speculate on,

What could a society that seeks to maintain a very strict order hate more than someone who presents the greatest threat to it? Perhaps, Superfish's magic even allows him to render the magic of other witches dysfunctional in some way. We already have seen him replicate the same on a very broad level with his core-removal spell.

Perhaps, he has always been able to carry out minor versions of the same thing? Making witches incapable of using magic for some short duration. Or, he may instead sport a degree of invulnerability to magic cast upon him that witches do not normally have.

Toppleprey called him a "defect" right after he was rendered powerless against him, somewhat implying that something like this has happened before, even if to a much lesser degree. There is likely some precedent to Superfish being able to render magic used against him useless.

Most likely, the "worse day" that DJ is referring to is the day his parents passed away, leaving behind a family of two that must now navigate this large world on its own. When it comes to grief such as this, there is only a before and an after. It becomes a defining point of your life, and I am certain the same is true for DJ.

As readers, we have only been shown the after of this tragedy, but the before lives in the quiet moments. What were their lives like? How did his parents meet each other, and come together to build a family? How much of the house's decor is the lingering effect of their own tastes? The dishes that DJ prepares, and the way he labels containers carefully for his brother with messages of goodwill—is that something they used to do for the two of them? Was the car that Arun drives theirs?

Sometimes, there is more meaning in the careful ways in which we look away from some things, than the ones we look directly in the eye. DJ's offhand comment that's never elaborated upon leaves his thoughts up to interpretation, highlighting how he himself prefers to leave them behind.

Still, all of this is ever present in DJ's tendency toward self-reliance and self-denial—making himself convenient so he can support the people he loves and cares for.

"Every witch is crafted with their own core."

In ancient alchemy and modern-day science-fiction, homunculi (generally) are miniature humanoid beings created through artificial means. The concept of the "artificial human" has been central in many works, and is often used to explore the themes surrounding identity, autonomy, and self hood.

While I do not have a reference to his exact words, when asked if Superfish could possibly be half-human and half-witch, pegl0 has repeatedly stated that there can never be such a thing as a half-witch. This can have numerous implications,

Perhaps, witchhood is not biologically transmissible. Instead, anyone who has a witch's core attached to them is effectively a witch. However, the physical strength and durability needed to harness the witch's core's magic is not something most species naturally have.

It may simply be a nod to witches despising other species to the point that they would never procreate with another species.

Or, it may be implying that witches themselves are infertile. If they cannot procreate naturally, that would explain a lot about them, including their hatred of humans, who look quite similar to them but are capable of naturally reproducing and increasing their ranks.

Superfish's own statement can be interpreted in multiple ways,

Perhaps, it was just phrased strangely and is simply explaining that every witch receives a core at birth that is crafted specifically for them. Hence, it's not the witch themself that's "crafted" but simply their core.

Or, witches are artificially created in some way to be able to harness the magical power of the witch's core.

Pegl0 has elaborated upon witch cores a few times,

Witch cores effectively function like parasites, preferring living hosts over inanimate ones.

They are the source of a witch's magical abilities, immortality, lack of physical aging, and near invulnerability.

Older witch cores are stronger.

He has also stated that "witches have existed since the beginning and are a completely different species" when asked about their origins, and whether they may have evolved from humans. He did not elaborate as the rest would constitute spoilers.

Taking all this into account, I propose one theory for how witches may have come to exist,

In ancient times, Obscaria somehow came to exist as an alternate dimension.

Humans may have found their way into this dimension at some point, and then encountered magic and witch cores.

They may have learnt to change and enhance their physical characteristics using potion magic, eventually differentiating themselves as a species and gaining the ability to effectively wield witch cores. They may have also learnt to create witch cores on their own, albeit ones which are not as strong as the naturally occurring ones.

However, it may have come at the cost of other biological functions.

Even in human biology, the processes governing reproduction and longevity are set in opposition. Based on research conducted on various proportions of carbohydrates and proteins in animal diets (Eat Like The Animals is an excellent book exploring the subject), we have learnt that the functions that favor greater reproductive fertility lead to a reduction in lifespan.

Hence, it is possible that,

By enhancing themselves this way, witches differentiated themselves as a species at the cost of the ability to reproduce.

Since then, they may have either taken to using human sacrifices to create more witches, or simply creating them from the scratch using various materials, which would explain how "every witch is crafted with their own core."

It would also explain why witches despise humans and anything connected to them. Wouldn't it be aggravating if a species you see as being "worthless, annoying, and weak" didn't have to work so extensively to increase their numbers, unlike you? Especially if your species has created a society where power and hierarchies are everything, and it functions as a totalitarian and authoritarian regime.

Since one of the definitions of what constitutes "life" is an ability to reproduce, witches too may be "undead" in some way. Not alive. Not dead either. Instead inhabiting a liminal space the way viruses do in biology.

In Superfish’s dream sequence, we only see her in one scene where,

She is dressed in a tattered dress, has dark hair, and dark eyes.

She is kneeling on the ground next to a wooden pole.

She is not visibly restrained, magically or otherwise.

She is crying and clearly upset.

While at first I had considered that she may be human, there are some things that point sharply toward that not being the case.

Pegl0 has made it clear time and again that humans are not allowed in Obscaria.

Witches especially dislike associating with humans. With how Toppleprey immediately killed a human for “being in his way” and wiped his hand after dealing with a werewolf, it is safe to say that if she were a human, she would have been killed near immediately.

We have seen the designs of three witches so far: Superfish, Toppleprey, and Scuttlebox (an alternate universe version of DJ that happens to be a witch). Using their designs, we can conclude that witches generally have,

brightly colored hair,

glowing eyes,

and their magic too has a specific color associated with it.

From all of the above, we can deduce that,

She does not present enough of a threat to be restrained using any means, magical or regular, compared to Superfish, who has likely been chained using Toppleprey’s magic. She likely does not have any magical powers.

The above is further bolstered by the fact that she does not look like any of the witches we have seen so far. Even witches who have lost their witch cores (and thus the ability to perform magic) still retain their witch-like appearance, as can be seen in Toppleprey’s case.

However, she also is likely not a human.

That only leaves two options: she is either a powerless witch or another Obscarian species altogether. Arguments can be made to support either option.

These are some of the reasons that favor her being a witch,

Pegl0 has stated that we won’t be encountering most of the other species present in Obscaria in this story.

Given that witches generally dislike everyone except themselves, it is more likely that whatever judicial practices they have in place to “deal” with other species would be separate from those that deal with witches.

If every witch is “crafted” with their own core, it is possible that cores do not always “take” to a witch, leaving some of them powerless and incapable. (See -> The Nature of Witches: Are they even “alive” in the conventional sense?)

There are also reasons that favor her being another Obscarian species,

Given what we know of witches (and how Superfish is a bit of an exception among them in terms of temperament), a witch crying like this seems unlikely.

It is possible Superfish was evaluated alongside the “lesser” species of Obscaria because he was considered a “defect” and had thus lost the right to personhood in witch society.