It is a rare and wonderful thing indeed to stumble by accident across a series of graphic novels that happily combine an imaginative sense of the surreal and the fantastical, an emotional resonance that captures the heart and profoundly so, and a willingness to unapologetically reflect the world as it is with vivacity and honesty.
Discovering The Backstagers via some sort of Googling rabbit hole was a joyous piece of happenstance that has been rewarding to read in so many unexpected ways.
Set in a high school, St Genesius Prepatory High School, where staging theatrical productions is less a curricular activity and more of an obsessive necessity, The Backstagers is a delicious delight that celebrates people who don’t fit in with the mainstream but, naturally enough, have a wealth of wonderful things to contribute if only you’ll give them the time of day.
The glorious part of the series is that Jory, who is new to St Genesius and afraid to get involve with anyone or anything (hiding in a hedge seems a good tactic for the rest of high school, something his mum vetoes), Hunter, Aziz, Sasha and Beckett are more alive and committed to each other’s welfare and their backstage vocation that many of the more “normal” kids wandering the hallyways of the school.
Society and many stories celebrate the mainstream kids as the paragons of emerging humanity but the truth is, the really interesting, fun and imaginative people, the people who later go on to do really cool and interesting things, are often the people you never see and discount if you do.
Big mistake.
Because the gang between the curtains at St Genesius, the ones who make the magic of theatre happen by making props and running the sound and lights and conceiving of the look and feel of each play or musical, are some of the most creative people you will ever meet.
Writer James Tynion IV and artist Rian Sygh (who are bi and trans respectively) know how true this is, with Tynion telling The Advocate that this why they wanted to celebrate these unique and under-appreciated individuals:
“They never get the applause or the thanks they deserve, and they certainly aren’t the most normal people in their high school, but they love doing what they do, and they love doing it together.”
It’s this innate, warmhearted and affectionately fractious camaraderie that makes The Backstagers spring so heartwarmingly to life.
When Jory decides the only group he can possibly join are the theatre actors, a decision he quickly regrets because the two boys in charge of things, precociously rude and self-involved twins Kevin and Blake McQueen, he discovers instead the group behind the scenes who are in charge of creating all the bells and whistles that make each production truly sing.
The McQueen twins who hilariously, over the top precious look upon the backstagers with open contempt, thinking them beneath them in ways too numerous to mention but as Jory discovers, unlike the actors who labour under a cruel regime instituted by the brothers, Hunter and Beckett, Sasha and Aziz love and accept each other in the kind of way that Jory needs and craves in ways he can’t even articulate until he has it.
They don’t always get on but then what family ever totally does; the lovely part about being loved and accepted for who you are by your family, the one you’re born into or create for yourself, is that it gives you room to do things both right and wrong, and while the latter may earn you temporary opprobrium, you are ultimately loved, supported and cared for.
The Backstagers is essentially a love song to being truly loved and accepted for who you, especially in a queer context where acceptance can be a hard thing to come by.
If, like this reviewer, you are a queer person who spent many years in school being bullied mercilessly for who you are, you will love the way in which Tynion creates a world where Jory and Hunter fall in love and become boyfriends, where Beckett is finally free to be the person they always knew deep down they were, where Aziz and Sasha can defy societal or cultural expectations and just be their own damn beautiful selves.
And it makes for some truly enriching, inspiring and uplifting reading.
No one bats an eyelid that Jory and Hunter make out all the time – although they are gently teased about it which is what friends do to each other – or that Sasha is impulsive and rushes off to eat too much sugar and face down the monsters that inhabit the backstage.
They may not always get or understand each straight away, and disagreements occur as they do in any set of relationships, but fundamentally they accept, love and support each other, something which is in evidence in every gloriously colourful scene.
Which brings us, as it should, to Sygh’s bautifully evocative art.
It is the most luminously gorgeous work, full of sparkly vibrancy, colour without restriction and an anything goes sensibility that matches the narrative and overarching themes of The Backstagers perfectly.
So perfectly in fact that it is hard to imagine anyone other than Sygh working with Tynion to bring these stories to arrestingly vivid life.
There are two main thematic elements to The Backstagers which Sygh distills into every panel – the unapologetic queerness of many of the characters who have encountered all kinds of non-acceptance in their life but have finally found a home with the backstage crew, and the rampant;y expansive oddness of the fantastical area behind the curtain where the paint you need to decorate props run in rivers overseen by Echo Spiders, where the rooms change at whim and random and your costume room may not be where you left it last time and where the spirits of lost backstagers haunt the living in an attempt to bring the magic of the theatre to the world at large in ways neither healthy nor intended.
Sygh makes this all feel very alive and very real, giving the more fantastical elements The Backstagers, and they are welcomingly legion, an explosive joyfulness and sense of visual presence that are in sync, in ways that makes the heart sing and the spirit soar, with the rich characterisation and storyline created by Tynion.
They are the perfect team and The Backstagers feels like one of the more unified series this reviewer has read for that very reason, gifting us in the process with a series that celebrates queerness and being yourself, upholds the freeing safety and excitement of being loved unconditionally by close friends (even if your biological family is lacking in that department) and does in ways so imaginatively rich and colourful that you will spend much of your time reading these graphic novels happy to have found them and so very thankful that though the world may not always accept you, your found-family always will and it make your life a far better place in ways that are literally and metaphorically magical and forever life-changing.