Ghostopolis
| Ghostopolis | |
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| Date | July 1, 2010 |
| Page count | 272 pages |
| Publisher | GRAPHIX |
| Creative team | |
| Writers | Doug TenNapel |
| Artists | Doug TenNapel |
| Pencillers | Doug TenNapel |
| Colourists | Ethan Nicolle |
Ghostopolis is a graphic novel, written and penciled by Doug TenNapel, colored by Ethan Nicolle and published by GRAPHIX, a Scholastic Inc. imprint.
The story revolves around two main characters: Garth Hale, a young teenage boy, and Frank Gallows, a middle-aged agent of the Supernatural Immigration Task Force, a government partition dedicated to locating ghosts amiss in the physical world and transporting them back to the afterlife (here known as the title Ghostopolis).
Garth is suffering from an unidentified "incurable disease". It is mentioned that the relationship between Garth's mother and deceased grandfather was strained, Garth's mother referring to him as a "drunk".
Frank uses devices known as "plasmacuffs" to apprehend wayward ghosts. On a routine call to remove a Nightmare (a skeletal horse of the afterlife), Frank accidentally ports Garth to Ghostopolis along with the spectre.
In Ghostopolis, Garth unintentionally tames and befriends the Nightmare, nicknaming him "Skinny" due to the horse's incorporeal appearance. Before long, the hostile nature of Ghostopolis is revealed by local fauna that attacks Garth and Skinny. Narrowly escaping an attack by several Velociraptor skeletons, Garth determines that his best course of action is to venture into the main city.
Meanwhile, Frank is fired from his position on the Task Force for his grievous mistake and instead enlists his ghost ex-fiancée, Claire Voyant, to assist him in traveling to Ghostopolis and retrieving Garth.
Dazed and confused by the netherworld around him, Garth eventually happens upon his own grandfather, Cecil. Cecil is younger than Garth in appearance. As explained by Cecil, "There's no physics-based time here in the afterlife... we get put back to our internal age. It gives us a chance to take care of unfinished business." It is mentioned that an argument about earrings was the source of friction between Cecil and Garth's mother, though he now looks down on it as petty. As Garth's time in Ghostopolis extends, and the closer Cecil comes to reconciling for his transgressions against his daughter (Garth's mother), the "older" Cecil becomes.
Along the way to the city, Cecil explains to Garth the origins of Ghostopolis itself.
It was all built by one man... a mysterious Tuskegee airman named Joe. He made every mountain you see, laying one chunk of sand at a time. He stacked every brick in Ghostopolis so that ghosts would have a place to live. Some say that it took him six days to build everything. Others say that it took him a billion years... It's hard to say how long it took since time is all jumbled up in Ghostopolis.
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