There is no greater joy than plunging into a highly-regarded series of any kind, but in this case a graphic novel, and finding that it’s not just as good as everyone says but quite possibly even better.
Eisner-nominated Crowded from Image comics, which has now been collected into two gorgeously-presented trade paper editions, and is the work of a very talented bunch of people including Christopher Sebela (script and design), Ro Stein and Ted Brandt (line art) and Triona Farrell (colours), is one of those rare and special properties that is exuberantly, boldly, compellingly its very own special creation that deserves all the superlative praise heaped upon it.
From the vividly-realised characters, including the two main protagonists Charlie Ellison, who is the subject of a crowdfunded assassination campaign via an app called REAPR, and her hired bodyguard (the lowest rated on DFEND) to the witty, sparkling, leap-off-the-page dialogue through the lushly-vivacious artwork and colouring, Crowded is an unqualified gem, a triumph of comic book writing and design that really has few recent equals.
That may sound like impossibly high praise but within frames of beginning to reading the 12 issues collected in the two trade paper editions, it becomes clear you are dealing with something very special.
The worldbuilding alone, which is instant and dazzlingly complete, is cause for praise and accolade.
Wasting no time plunging into the story, which is full on and funny and seriously intense in equal measure, Crowded immediately draws a world in which the gig economy rules, apps are everywhere and rule everything and where even the police and paramedics are more beholding to commercial imperatives than old-fashioned ideas about serving the public good.
It’s not a dystopian society as such but it is perilously close to it, with the value of human life subsumed under all kinds of pressures to the point where the average person in the street thinks nothing of picking up a gun and going after a bounty via REAPR.
Especially when its Charlie Ellison’s head on the chopping block and the reward is rising rapidly from $1 million to $2 million and giddily beyond.
The police don’t condone this, of course, but so prevalent is this commercially-endorsed vigilante trend, that they have little choice but to do what they can to inhibit it via procedural requirement and reams of bureaucratic red tape.
The amusing side effect of all this app-based bounty hunting is that society has become far more polite and friendly because no one, and I mean no one, wants to risk offending someone who with a few clicks can put a contract on your life.
Alas, for her at least, Charlie Ellison, all bubblegum pink hair, garrulously extrovert persona and buoyant narcissistic tendencies, never got the self-preservational niceness memo and has spent her often hard-scrabble life doing what she needs to get by and not caring overly who she upsets to get what she needs or wants.
The result?
A massive reward for her death, an entire population wanting to be the one to claim it and a gargantuan existential crisis for Charlie who begins her whole misbegotten adventure with a careless bravura bordering on the exuberantly reckless and ends up at the end of the second volume (where lies a cliffhanger that must be resolved; the fact no issue has appeared since March this year is hopefully not cause for concern) a great deal more circumspect but not completely stripped of her joyfully self-involved inclinations.
What makes Crowded such an easily-readable joy is the warmth, animosity and depth of the relationship that develops between Charlie and her paid protector Vita.
Vita, who is damn good at what she does despite her low rating – that is a little dig, I think, at the way that people mark someone or something down for the most trivial of reasons that has little to nothing to do with capability or experience – and simply wants to protect Charlie until the month-long campaign has run its course, is appalled at how secretive and glib her client is and how she seems predisposed to treating the whole thing as a joke.
Charlie, meanwhile, thinks Vita is far too serious for her own good, although as events go on and scene after scene shows people attempting to kill Charlie by all manner of creative means, she does sober up and realise that the triggering behaviour for the REAPR campaign to which her “friends” have all contributed may been valid and she could take things as seriously as her bodyguard does.
The spirited back and forth between a largely devil-may-care though concerned Charlie and an increasingly exasperated Vita are the making of Crowded, providing an anchoring relationship through which of the highly-engaged storyline plays out.
As a result of this focus on Charlie and Vita and the queer undertones running through the entire narrative, Crowded is a ridiculous amount of fun to read, brilliantly balancing witty social commentary with the weird dynamics of attraction and relationships under pressure and a zestful cheekiness, mostly exhibited by Charlie, who is as memorable a protagonist as you’re ever likely to get.
Throw in artwork so beautifully drawn and coloured in and lettered that it evokes the near-future world these women inhabit (with the hilariously named Dog in tow) with spectacular brightness and aliveness and an expressiveness that delights in every single damn panel, and you have a gloriously full-bore graphic novel series full of wit and verve and an abundance of imaginative cleverness and wonder that is most definitely worth celebrating in every single way you can, and which is worthy of all the exuberant hype you want to throw its way.