By Zack Quaintance — The first thing readers are likely to notice about The Phantom Twin’s intriguing cover, which features two twins looking at each other face-to-face, one of which is in full color while the other is black-and-white, depicted in a way that clearly evokes the idea of her being a ghost. It’s a great visual. More importantly, though, it speaks directly to the nature of this story.

The Phantom Twin is about a pair of conjoined twins around the turn of the 19th Century. The first act of the book is essentially spent getting to know the pair of them as they navigate their world of appearing in old-timey circus freak shows, for lack of a better word to describe it. The book is clearly steeped in real world research about those shows, and writer/artist Lisa Brown does an excellent job spinning great artwork from the concept. The turning point for this one comes right around the end of the first act, with a self-motivated doctor begging to separate them and botching the procedure, leaving alive only one of the twins, our main character, who never really wanted to be separated in the first place.

It’s inherently great material for an all ages story, but what really makes this book worth reading is how Brown builds such a strong character-driven narrative within her well-researched and expertly-depicted world of turn-of-the-century freak shows and the people who patronize them. This is really about a young woman on the fringe of society who comes to terms with that, eventually finding her people (in the parlance of our times), and reaching a place of honesty with herself about what it is she really wants and why. It’s a wonderful character journey played out with simple-yet-bright cartoon artwork that makes this book really sing. 

All that said, The Phantom Twin is not the flashiest book I’ve read from publisher First Second this year, and that’s fine. It’s a bite-size graphic novel really, spanning 200-pages with pretty minimal dialogue, which means that it will end up taking roughly an hour for most to read. I think that’s how long it took me. It was definitely a one-sitting type of book. The other qualm (and that’s really what these are, small qualms) that I had throughout this one is that pretty much all the plot developments are telegraphed very far in advance. Which is also fine, with this being a book for young readers, and all.

And that’s really what the biggest strength here — this is a great read for young readers. It offers interesting research to fuel the whole love of learning thing, great and immersive artwork, and a valuable lesson about knowing yourself and being content with the other folks in your orbit versus obsessing over the picture of what society tells you to yearn for. Even at my age, that’s something I can without question get behind...and also would do well to remember at times. 

The Phantom Twin
Writer/Artist: Lisa Brown
Publisher: FirstSecond
A young woman is haunted by the ghost of her conjoined twin, in Lisa Brown's The Phantom Twin, a sweetly spooky graphic novel set in a turn-of-the-century sideshow. Isabel and Jane are the Extraordinary Peabody Sisters, conjoined twins in a traveling carnival freak show—until an ambitious surgeon tries to separate them and fails, causing Jane's death. Isabel has lost an arm and a leg but gained a ghostly companion: Her dead twin is now her phantom limb. Haunted, altered, and alone for the first time, can Isabel build a new life that's truly her own?
Release Date: March 3, 2020

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.