Coady and the Creepies is one of those delightful graphic novels that you love from the first page.
That might make it sound like the introduction to punk music-playing 16-year-old triplet sisters Coady, Criss and Corey is all lightness and exuberantly fun dialogue, a whirl of visual fun and vividly-realised characters that makes you fall in love with them immediately; it is anything but however with the van accident that scarred Corey, left Criss in a wheelchair and Coady seemingly unharmed put right to the fore so we understand exactly where the sisters sometime later as we meet them.
It is a sobering start no doubt and helps understand the crucial event that has shaped the sisters in the present, but as we meet Coady and her siblings it is clear that physical injuries and lingering grief at the death of their deceased manager Marnie aside, that they are well on the road to recovery.
Joined now by roadie José, who has an obsession with chimichangas to the point where they almost fill the van to overflowing, the band is close to completing Pinmageddon, which involves collecting all the enamel pins from punk venues across the United States.
If successful, and they are only two pins away from completing the set, they will be the first band to achieve this feat, something which causes their idiotic thuggish rivals the Boneheads, no end of annoyance.
But though that’s a major achievement, what really makes the triplets happy is playing punk music loud and hard (is there any other way, really?) and it’s that passion that gets them out of bed every day.
The only fly in this happily musical ornament? Coady is, in fact, dead, a ghost who through sheer will and effort manages to keep corporeal form so she can play drums, hold things and look normal and alive.
Which she is not BUT neither Criss nor Corey know this, thinking their sister, who’s always been a little quirky, is just a little more odd following the accident.
It’s a fun premise for Coady and the Creepies which gloriously celebrates the bonds of family and friendship, how grief can linger even once the healing begins and the way music can bring joy to lives that have found more pain than happiness of late.
That’s a lot of good substantial things going on and co-creators Liz Prince and Amanda Kirk (with colouring by Hannah Fisher) – Prince handles the funny but insightfully empathetic writing while Kirk takes care of the vibrantly alive illustrations and memorable characterisation – fold them perfectly into a story that is as meaningful and heartfelt as it is endearingly, playfully funny.
It’s takes real talent of course to balance dark and light in any narrative but Prince manages it with aplomb, giving a real sense of rich humanity to a story that isn’t afraid to be goofy or silly but knows that, ultimately, witty oneliners and clever dialogue aside, the sisters and those in their orbit are real people struggling with some pretty intensive issues.
It’s this focus on them as people, and not simply as narrative fodder, that gives Coady and the Creepies such such a winning sense of extravagant meaning and purpose; you care about these three young aspiring musicians and you want them to find success and happiness.
It’s this identification with the characters that grants the series immense appeal, helped along by fulsome world-building, glorious artwork and colouring which is so vividly done that it almost leaps off the page, and dialogue that’s fervently clever but never pretentious, almost feeling like the kind of things real people might see.
Real people, it should be added, that have a ghost in their midst and a lot more supernatural encounters than the average person.
Their inadvertent predilection for ghostly goings-on notwithstanding, much of what happens to Coady and the Creepies reflects what life is like for people, especially young people, trying to make a fulfilling way through life in the wake of deep and abiding trauma, and though the story is often sweetly, charmingly funny and light, it’s not afraid to suddenly go dark because that’s how life happens.
The good and the bad, the sad and the happy often merge or sit right on top of each other and though we’d like everything to be neat and orderly, it rarely is, and Coady and the Creepies beautifully explores this in ways that are sobering and soul-lightening all at once, and which ensure that these characters and their wholly unique story find their way into your heart and stay there for the duration.
