This genre is especially fun, I think, because the art of graphic novels helps me to see the whole thing unfolding as a movie in my imagination. The visual elements (and, I think, the graphic novel’s relationship to its wildly imaginative comic book cousins) open the door to all kind of crazy things without the exposition that would be needed in a text, and it’s decidedly a whole lot of fun to be swept away in. In Ghostopolis, ghost hunter Frank uses “plasmacuffs” to send a phantom horse back to the afterlife, because of course that’s what you use. Five pages later, Bill comes to life and accidentally punches out Mike, and I don’t pause and think, “How come his cardboard arm didn’t crumple in half?” I’m sold. Does that happen to you too, or is it just me? In the first 30 pages of Cardboard, Cam and his dad Mike create Bill, a life-sized champion boxer, out of a cardboard box. There are big, life-changing experiences happening on the page, and it’s even a little transformative for the reader, I think, to go through that journey with the characters.Īnother thing I’ve been noticing about graphic novels, and TenNapel’s in particular, is the way that I am totally willing to buy in to whatever outlandish premise they ask me to accept. A large suburban house into a cardboard kingdom. A spiteful neighbor kid into a loyal friend.
Turning a beloved dog into a friendly dinosaur. He seems to kind of delight in taking a thing or person and making it bigger, better, different. You guys, they’re so much fun! One theme that I’ve latched on to in TenNapel’s work is the idea of transformation.
I read Ghostopolis earlier in the year, and tore through Tommysaurus Rex and Cardboard in the past few days. Those things just won’t stay on the shelves! Graphic novels are a genre that I don’t have much experience with or knowledge about, but when several friends recommended TenNapel’s books to me, I thought it was high time I dove in and saw what all the fuss was about. If I was in charge of collection development for my local library system, I’d be considering ordering 2-3 more copies of every graphic novel by Doug TenNapel, since earlier this year it took me two months to get my hands on even one copy for a graduate school assignment.
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