Anna doesn’t understand how to deal with her mother because she feels like she has to be the mother to a woman who’s older than she is and should be more stable. As someone who has intimate knowledge of the relationship between a stable child and a very messed-up mother, this part of the book felt true to me. It’s excellent stuff, because Anna has to learn things about her mother that she resists, she has to grow up a bit, and she has to learn what she can and can’t control in her life and in her relationship with her mother.

The book is also about Anna’s relationship with her mother, who’s an alcoholic, and how they interact with each other.

Anna, of course, is steeped in film history, so that’s something, too, especially when the mansion is one that was built by a famous silent star in the 1920s. She takes the case partly because Lorna Valentine was kind to her at a convention back in the 1970s, when Anna, a child at the time, went with her father. Brubaker is too clever for that.Īnna has been an interesting character throughout this series of graphic novels, but we don’t know too much about her, so in this one, that gets rectified. But, of course, the case isn’t all there is to this comic. In fact, the case gets solved partly because of the kindness of one person who’s definitely not a good person, which is nicely ironic. Of course, there are logical explanations for both those things, but again, neither involves a serious crime (some misdemeanors, that’s it). That’s the case: find the dog, and determine if a house is haunted.

Tragic things have happened in the house, and Lorna’s dog went missing the night before, so she’s a bit put out. Anna gets a visit from B-movie “scream queen” Lorna Valentine, who just inherited a fabled mansion in the Hollywood hills, and she wants Anna to find out if it’s haunted or not. In this book, there’s not really a major crime (I mean, there’s sort of one, but I doubt if the perpetrator will be punished in any meaningful way), but it’s still compelling. The fun thing about these books is that because Ethan – and, in this one, Anna – aren’t really private investigators, they can get involved in things that aren’t life-shattering events but still tread in the murkier side of life. Is the book still good? I mean, it’s Brubaker and Phillips – what do you think?!?!? This time, however, our hero is absent (his absence is the focus of the next book, it seems), so Anna, who runs his movie theater, steps into the spotlight a bit more. “Well, I’m gonna ride a saber tooth horse through the Hollywood hills”Įd Brubaker and Sean Phillips keep on keeping on with their latest “Reckless” book, The Ghost in You, which Image published, naturally (and which was colored by Jacob Phillips, just to make sure the credits are complete!).

The ghost in you brubaker