While the majority of the comics projects listed on our Broken Frontier Mental Health Awareness Resource List are autobiographical in nature it is important to remember that escapist fiction can play as vital a role in communicating the issues involved as first person testimony. Creator Ethan Sacks and his daughter Naomi Sacks co-wrote miniseries A Haunted Girl (to be collected as a trade paperback by Image Comics in May) using their own lived family experiences as a storytelling foundation. The result is a tale that blends otherworldly supernatural intrigue with a very real exploration of living under the oppression of depression.
A Haunted Girl’s tagline “The fate of all life on Earth depends on a girl who doesn’t know if she wants to live” neatly captures the core premise of the book, with its title obviously taking on a dual nature. The story centres on the character of Cleo, a 16-year-old schoolgirl who is struggling to resume her old life after depression led her to a suicide attempt. But Cleo is also plagued by visitations from the spirits of the dead. As events escalate she must come to terms with the revelation that she has a very special destiny to fulfil while still struggling to deal with her mental health…
A Haunted Girl is a story of extended narrative metaphor, with Cleo’s fight against the Japanese death goddess Izanami and a coming ghostly apocalypse paralleling her own battle with depression. The Sacks partnership interweaves these two central storylines with great care, largely avoiding obvious information dumps and organically folding Cleo’s more earthly story into her supernatural one.
Artist Marco Lorenzana allows the quiet intensity of the story to take the front seat for the most part, often avoiding intrusively ostentatious and over-the-top horror in order to create a more character-focussed piece visually… right up until an electrifying concluding chapter anyway. Andres Mossa does a sterling job on the colouring front with an application that emphasises tone, atmosphere and, especially, the key emotional moments of the story, while Jaime Martinez uses all the lettering tools available to communicate both the creepier elements and the character-led ones.
The single issues are also replete with back matter that provides ideas for support for those struggling with their mental health and thoughts about considering wellbeing. A Haunted Girl takes traditional genre comics narrative and imbues it with a socially conscious focus. For that alone it deserves our recognition.
Ethan Sacks and Naomi Sacks (W), Marco Lorenzana (A), Andres Mossa (C), Jaime Martinez (L), Fico Ossio (CA) • Image Comics/Syzygy Publishing, £13.99
Review by Andy Oliver
