Three faceless, cloaked figures loom large on the front steps of the Ahmadzai abode. The young girl at the door — Nyneve — doesn't know it yet, but today is her father's last. The Witch Burners have come to burn him at the stake. His crime? Being born with hair deemed too long.

This is how the reader enters Witchy: a fantasy webcomic entirely populated by 'WOC' — witches of colour — created by 25-year-old Australian-Indonesian comics artist, illustrator and animator Ariel Ries.

"You can make a story where no-one's white," she says.

An excerpt from chapter 1 of Witchy by Ariel Ries. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

Since 2014, Ries's coming-of-age tale has been included on almost every 'best of' and 'must-read' list for LGBTQI+ inclusive webcomics, and in 2015, Witchy received international recognition with a nomination for an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic.

In September this year, Witchy's first four chapters were collected into a printed edition by Lion Forge Comics — a US indie publisher focused on culturally diverse stories and comics creators.

Ries is a Melbourne-based queer comics artist, illustrator and animator. ( ABC Arts: Leah Jing McIntosh )

Witchy is set in the fantastical witch kingdom of Hyalin, and chronicles the trials and tribulations of Nyneve — a queer South Asian teen witch — who must choose between assimilating into a society that persecutes her kind, or defying it.

In Hyalin, there are only three types of people: those who have long hair, those who do not, and those with long hair deemed to be dangerous — the latter are "annihilated" for the greater good at the discretion of the government.

Ries imagines a world in which hair-length equals power and magical prowess, and a society where creed, disability, skin colour, sexual identity and ethnicity are not what divides or marginalises.

Ries created Dai "Prill" Si Yue (right) in response to the trans community on Tumblr expressing a desire to see themselves reflected in fantasy and sci-fi narratives. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

"People with marginalised backgrounds aren't less valuable," she says.

Witchy's core cast of characters — Afghan-Indian Nyvene Ahmadzai, Mongolian-Tibetan classmate Mongke Batu, and Dai "Prill" Si Yue, a trans witch of colour with Chinese and South East Asian heritage — have particularly resonated with people identifying as Queer and/or of Asian descent.

"The whole comic is ultimately about the difference between your actual value and the value that society prescribes to you," says Ries.

A revolt against society

The process of sketching, inking and colouring a page takes Ries between 4-6 hours. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

Witchy began in 2012 as a short story, worked on by Ries during her transition out of high school and through her first year studying animation at RMIT in Melbourne.

It was only supposed to be 50 pages.

From 2014, Ries began publishing her "experimental" hair-powered "Asian witches side project" online, releasing a page a week for free on both her personal site and Tumblr.

"[Working] in this way means the story gets to evolve as I evolve as a person, including my values, ethics, and morals," she says.



In its initial stages, Witchy played off the "standard Young Adult novel" trope where "a young girl saves the world", Ries says. But five years on, the artist observes that so much in the world has changed.

The design of witch kingdom Hyalin is influenced by Ries' South East Asian and Islamic heritage. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

Referencing the #BlackLivesMatter movement, worldwide climate strikes and Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, Ries says "an overarching theme that I will be exploring as the plot progresses is the idea of a revolt against societal ideals".

Ries says that she realised at a certain point that "this can't be the story about one person's actions; maybe one person's actions spark an idea, but it spreads throughout the community ... it takes a lot of people to make change."



The power of webcomics



The first four chapters or Ariel Ries' Witchy have been packaged into a printed edition. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

Ries says she started drawing from a young age, and was reading webcomics from the age of 8.

Drawing became more than just a pastime: it was a safe haven of escapism during school where "she was bullied quite badly", and a way to make friends.



"I was interested in drawing characters of different backgrounds and ethnicities even then," Ries recalls.



"Obviously a part of me wanted [to see] that diversity that I wasn't really getting on screen [or in real life]."

Webcomics filled that need — as did Oekaki: the online forum and open-source drawing program where Ries honed her visual storytelling amongst a community from all over the world.



For Ries, while it is important to see marginalised voices in mainstream media, it is equally important to support self-publishing and distribution models like webcomics, where creatives can develop work without the censorship or "money-grabbing" objectives that working with major publishers might entail.



Writing in her queer comics column for Autostraddle in 2016, trans writer Mey Rude wrote: "The proliferation of webcomics recently has allowed for an explosion of terrific comics by and about women of colour, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities and people who live at the intersections of those identities... people belonging to those groups who previously didn't have a chance to see themselves in any media at all, are now able to see themselves represented for the first time."



Draw what you want to see

Chapter two of Witchy jumps forward a decade, and we meet a stoic teenage Nyneve still understandably tormented by her father's demise. Knowing her fate may follow the same path to the stake, she and her mother fashion a spell to conceal her long hair.

Nyneve is also faced with the dilemma of being selected to compete for the honour of joining Hyalin's Witch Guard: guardians of the kingdom during peace, warriors in times of conflict — and responsible for her father's death.

An excerpt from chapter 2 of Witchy by Ariel Ries. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

These issues of identity and assimilation run parallel to Ries's own experience.

"Even though I had a lot of Indonesian family around me growing up, you know, all my aunts and uncles and my grandparents have tried very hard to assimilate. So even though there are parts of the Indonesian culture that are just sort of ingrained deeply in me and in my family in ways that I'm not even really conscious of, there was also a lot of stuff that they tried to erase from themselves."

Ulysse Malassagne's comic Kairos and the otherworldly landscape of Guilin, China, inspire the art of Witchy. ( Supplied: Ariel Ries )

At the same time, she describes "growing up without seeing any South East Asian faces on TV, in books".



"I had no point of reference for who I was, what I was supposed to look like, who I was supposed to be," she says.



"I felt quite lost."



Ries' desire to represent those shut out of the mainstream has inspired others to act rather than wait to be seen.



"It's an empowering feeling to see that people who have read [Witchy] have said it inspired them to draw people who look like themselves," she says.



"It's the best validation I could receive."

Witchy is out now through Lion Forge Comics or can be read as a free webcomic.