Introduction
People have always been fascinated to read more colorful novels and other literary works than just pure texts. It is believed that the more you stimulate your senses, the higher the chances that you will have fun. We call these books graphic novels because of their not only story-telling quality but also because of their catchy and detailed drawing that would surely help the readers have a good grasp about what really happened or what really is happening at a particular scene. Among the most successful graphic novels published in 2010 was Doug TenNapel’s Ghostopolis.
Ghostopolis Overview
Ghostopolis is a renowned and an award winning book written by Doug TenNapel and it is not surprising that the author himself was also the same person who drew the drawings that depicts the different scenes readers could find in the book. The book was published last year, July 2010, with 272 pages and just after a short while, it became recognized a lot of people. Because of this, it will soon have its first film adaptation and theoretically, it will click just like its printed literary counterpart. Of course, it is obvious that this is book is a fictional simply because of the settings involved, and the characters’ background.
Some of the characters here were ghost and we even have a character named Frank who is a ghost wrangler. The story is about a boy, named Garth, who is as good as dead. The story actually only has two main characters and yet a lot of different and mind-twisting things happened. This is a spectacular thing that only a few authors could actually execute because some novels, even non-graphic novels, usually employ more than 2 or even 10 characters to catch the readers’ attention.
Perhaps one good thing about this novel is that it only has 2 characters and the effect of that is it lets the readers focus on the story more than the characters and Higher and better appreciation of the book comes as a result.
Setting
There are two settings used in the story; one major and one minor setting. The minor setting was the real world where the main character, Garth used to live. The major setting was the ghost world or the Ghostopolis where he was brought by the ghost wrangler, accidentally. The settings used actually almost immediately triggers a feeling of fantasy rather than fear. Normal people would perceive ghosts and ghost worlds as something spooky or creepy. However, Doug TenNapel tried to create a new perspective using a not-so-spooky theme. There were moderate to little hostile or scary scenes that were actually present in the story and maybe this is one of the characteristics of the book that made it an award winning one.
Characters
The whole of the story revolved around two main characters although there were also other minor characters like Skinny (also known as “the nightmare” in the story, whose name was changed by Garth). Garth Hale, an almost dying boy who is as good as dead due to a certain disease and Frank Gallows, one of the toughest middle-aged agents of the Supernatural immigration Task Force in Ghostopolis, in charge of locating ghosts in the physical world and returning them back to where they are supposed to stay. Unfortunately, Garth, who is only as good as dead (not dead yet), was accidentally brought by Mr. Gallows and his adventure inside the hostile world of Ghostopolis began.
Awards
The book has gained a lot of attention since the day it was first released to the thousands of readers. One of the good qualities that triggered it to receive awards is perhaps its simplicity and how it established a connection between afterlife and fantasy. Some books or even graphic novels usually use the afterlife’s bad and scary image in intensifying the scary theme of their works but Doug, the author, used it in a whole new dimension. Also, there were a lot of things that happened to Garth inside Ghostopolis. When you look at the book from the outside, it only looks like a simply published book but once you read it, you will see that Ghostopolis (both the place and the book) actually has a lot of things to offer.
References
TenNapel, Doug. Ghostopolis. GRAPHIX, July 2010. Print.
