Ghosted in L.A. Volume 1
Written by Sina Grace
Art by Siobhan Keenan, Cathy Le, and Sina Grace
Lettering by DC Hopkins
Published by BOOM! Studios
‘Rama Rating: 6 out of 10
Take it from someone who’s lived it – moving to the West Coast can be a scary thing. But if you’re moving from Montana to follow your boyfriend to college in California, get dumped in the first week, and then stumble upon an old estate filled with the spirits of the Hollywood undead?
That’s not just getting ghosted – that’s getting Ghosted in L.A..
While writer Sina Grace and artist Siobhan Keenan take a winning high concept and elevate it with some truly engaging artwork, it isn’t quite enough to paper over the storytelling cracks riddling the book’s foundations. But even though the narrative contrivances and stilted dialogue drag down the momentum, Keenan and colorist Cathy Le’s charming artwork makes Ghosted in L.A. worth a look, even if this series feels a bit more like a fixer-upper.
College isn’t easy, and when you add both romance and the supernatural into the mix, the learning curve for Daphne Walters turns out to be steeper than one might expect. Similar to his characterization of Bobby Drake in Iceman, Sina Grace paints Daphne as a self-deprecating everywoman with a dad joke at the ready and a bad decision always around the corner. But because she has to share the spotlight with a houseful of Hollywood ghosts, Daphne never really gets enough space to breathe as a character – whether it’s being dumped by her boyfriend after moving to L.A. for him or discovering the existence of the undead, these moments never impact Daphne’s emotional state in the long-term.
If anything, rather than exploring any of these beats for their dramatic potential, Grace zips from plot point to new plot point, narrative convenience be damned. Sometimes this is in the macro-level, like Daphne inexplicably offering to stay with the ghosts at the haunted Rycroft Manor and the ghosts immediately accepting; other times, it’s down to small details, like Ronnie happening to show up to the Manor for a cliffhanger because Daphne forgot to turn off “share location” in group texts. It all ramps up to a surprisingly action-heavy conclusion, but none of it feels particularly earned – Daphne doesn’t have any clear goals, so she’s essentially a pinball being bounced around by the plot for reasons that never really become clear.
Which is a shame, because Ghosted in L.A.’s biggest potential isn’t the ghosts’ various underdeveloped powers, but their vibrance as individuals. Not only is Grace’s best work the various vignettes of three of Rycroft’s residents, but in general, artist Siobhan Keenan and colorist Cathy Le are the best part about this series. Keenan’s cartoony expressiveness feels reminiscent of Dodge City’s Cara McGee, and the specificity she gives her designs makes every character stand out. In a lot of ways, I feel like Keenan’s best work is seeing just how awkward Daphne can be in various situations, even as she acquits herself nicely with the sudden action-packed shift in the last chapter. (For example, a panel of a character falling off a panel to represent falling off a balcony is a really smart Hail Mary to make use of increasingly limited page space.)
But the true energy of Ghosted in L.A. comes from colorist Cathy Le, whose rendering gives Keenan just enough depth and whose palettes crank up the intensity nicely. Le is for sure this book’s secret weapon, imbuing the ghosts with an otherworldly teal while throwing in vibrant purples and fuschias to amp up the fun tone of the visuals. Le also does double-duty not just elevating Keenan’s characters, but covering up the occasional lack of backgrounds with liberal doses of electric color.
College often feels like the collision of expectations with reality, and maybe that’s what keeps me from giving a full-throated recommendation to Ghosted in L.A., versus the numerous qualifiers I’ve mentioned above. There’s a great high concept to this book, and a truly exciting art team – but this series spends so much time trying to juggle its varied inspirations that it never really does justice to either of them. At the end of the day, Ghosted in L.A.’s character-driven moments are the highlights of this book, and if Sina Grace’s sleeper-hit track record from Iceman is any indication, that success will likely follow this series as well. Based on the last ghost to appear in the series, the Rycroft Manor is clearly big enough to accommodate a variety of reader sensibilities – that is, if this series can focus less on spectacle and more on the unique characters that built it up in the first place.