You ever catch your dog staring aggressively into a corner of your house or your cat batting around an invisible ball? Spoiler alert: you’ve got ghosts. Between you and your pet stands centuries of ghostly entities ready to rip you to shreds, if wasn’t for ol’ Rover keeping them in check. You may not believe it, but for millennia, animals have been thought to be more finely in tune than us with the supernatural world and some are even rumored to foreshadow death simply by hanging out outside your bedroom. In Action Comics’ The Ghost, The Owl, we get an in-depth view of one of these creatures with “the sight” as an owl helps a lost ghost remember who she was. Wonderfully illustrated, this dark fairy tale swirls in and out of the pages, but ends up promising more than it can deliver with its more style-than-substance approach. If you ever wanted some watered down Gaiman, this is the book for you.
The book centers on a ghost and an owl who happen to meet each other one night in the deep, dark woods. Eager to help the amnesiac spirit, the owl begins by asking the other forest creatures to search for anything out of the ordinary. With no luck, the two get a clue in the form of an angry man on the edge of the woods. For reasons unknown, the man is obsessed with a woman who lives in a cabin and will go to any means to get her property or her heart. As his anger turns volatile, the ghost and the owl are forced to intervene, incurring the wrath of beings much higher than themselves. As they journey together through the night, will the owl be able to help the ghost remember herself, or will she forever be lost in the haze of the unknown?
The major selling point for The Owl, The Ghost is definitely the art. It’s a beautiful, hand-illustrated work that ranges from acrylic paints to color pencils and it doesn’t skimp on the detail. Every page has something interesting tucked away in the lines, urging the reader to look deeper at the work. It’s a phantasmagoria of the night time forest! Unfortunately, what the artist brings in animal and plant illustrations, she leaves behind in character design. Contrasting with the realistic art of the animals, the Ghost character is wildly cartoonish, with large eyes and a doll like head, creating a garish contrast to the work. I mean, sure, it’s a ghost, we can let it slide for a bit of creative license, but further on, we get introduced to the man and woman characters, and their style matches neither the realness of the woods or the anime aesthetic of the ghost. Instead, they’re more of a cross between outsider art and bad RPG board game design. It’s a bit of a visual mess with the only tie-together being the color work, which is consistent throughout. That being said, I do adore the absence panels, so at least the transitioning is pretty smooth.
The story for The Owl, The Ghost has its up and downs, but ultimately ends up being used as catalyst for the art instead of existing on its own. I like what it was trying to do, that is, a ghost mystery with animals as the focus. It’s got all the right ingredients to hook the reader, from the spirit in the woods to animal gods, but it falls short of having any real oomph to it. Perhaps it’s the fifty two page limit, but the story comes off as rushed and feels like a lot of the plot got left on the cutting room floor (and, to be honest, you can do a lot with fifty two pages). I especially disliked the man and woman characters who seemed to be ham-fisted and there to simply move the plot onwards. They were boring and one dimensional and even the artist seemingly didn’t like drawing them. Also, this was as much of a mystery as Nancy Drew is a detective which, if you’ve never read Nancy Drew, it mostly consists of her hanging around somewhere until the culprit reveals himself. In the end, the comic’s protagonists didn’t really solve anything either; they just hung out until it solved itself.
All in all, The Owl, The Ghost is less comic and more of a portfolio for the artist and would probably appeal to young readers more than anyone else. But if you just have to check out the wonderful art for yourself, the book is on stands now.