RAVENSWOOD — When Sage Coffey first doodled Wine Ghost in their sketchbook, the character burst fully formed onto the page: a ghost with long eyelashes, leg hair and a glass of wine with a curly straw.
Coffey had been designing cartoon characters since they were a kid, but this one felt special. They began chronicling Wine Ghost’s boozy escapades in a series of minicomics and live performances, and the more they created, the more they felt like Wine Ghost was a real spirit summoned with ink and paper, demanding her drunken stories be told.
“I know it’s such a stereotype to be like, ‘Oh, she has a life of her own,’” Coffey said. “But it really felt like she came to visit and she was like, ‘OK, you can be the one.’”
Now, Wine Ghost’s narrative continues in the graphic novel “Wine Ghost Goes to Hell,” which came out from Iron Circus Comics on Feb. 6. In the 92-page, full-color book, Wine Ghost is reunited with a recently deceased friend in the afterlife. The two pair up for bar hopping, apartment hunting and the growing realization that their toxic dynamic didn’t die with their corporeal forms.
“In her living days, Wine Ghost was a mess. She’s dead, and not much has changed,” Coffey said. “She has every quality I had in my 20s, but exaggerated to the umpteenth.”
Coffey moved to Chicago after college to tap into the city’s vibrant comics scene.
“Seeing zine readings like Zine Not Dead and going to shops like Quimby’s really opened my eyes to all that comics can be,” they said. “I’m not sure I would’ve been exposed to such incredible alternative art elsewhere.”
Today, they split their time between Ravenswood and downtown Skokie. They serve as the art director of the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, known as CAKE, where they help manage the show’s internet presence and work with the yearly CAKE artist on things like posters, T-shirts and ephemera.
As an artist, Coffey lives much more ambitiously than their ghostly counterpart. Their already accomplished career includes providing the illustrations for the Dan Sheehan book “I Am Not a Wolf,” working as a story editor on the video game Bugsnax and publishing comics with The New Yorker, the Washington Post and The Nib.
Over the next year, they’re planning a Wine Ghost Coast to Coast tour, with events across the country, including their home of Chicago.
Coffey wrote the first minicomic, “Wine Ghost Goes to Town,” to perform at Chicago reading series Zine Not Dead in 2017 — and took the stage engulfed in a homemade Wine Ghost puppet.
“It was Big Bird style, so I was fully encompassed,” Coffey said. “I couldn’t move my arms. I had a string I could pull to make her talk.”
More performances called for more sophisticated Wine Ghost puppets.
From the start, Coffey felt an urge to summon Wine Ghost to the physical world.
“When people read Wine Ghost, I want them to feel like they’re reading about a real person,” they said. “It makes sense that she’d be in meat space.”
Eventually, they had the opportunity to develop a plastic Wine Ghost figurine with Kent Venture of DoomCo Designs. The most challenging part came in freezing Wine Ghost in a single pose.
“Wine Ghost has so much character in her pure elasticity,” Venture said. “The toy version is the most static expression of the character, which offers a contrast to Wine Ghost’s typical 2D frenzy.”
The figure glows in the dark — a nod to the blacklight posters, arcade illustrations and horror kitsch that formed Coffey’s aesthetic. In building the new book’s feel, Coffey recalled a formative childhood visit to New Jersey’s Keansburg Park, where they covered their eyes through most of a haunted house ride.
“Every time I’d open my eyes, it’d be one of those chill liminal zones where there’s a painting of a vampire glowing orange,” they said. “I wanted to take those vibes and that memory and put it on paper.”
Part of Wine Ghost’s appeal is her absolute messiness. She drinks too much, says too much and generally floats through death without considering any repercussions.
Iron Circus editor Kel McDonald thinks Wine Ghost’s personality makes her stand out.
“Guy characters get to be messy disasters all the time, but it’s much rarer for female characters,” McDonald said. “It makes Wine Ghost’s mess a unique flavor that the world needs more of.”
But Coffey hopes readers will see beyond Wine Ghost’s shallowness to the multifaceted character who lives underneath. The book balances humor and heart to tell a story that moves beyond punchlines.
“I like to describe my work as a Weird Al cover of a Mitski song,” Coffey said. “Where it’s like, this is so funny, but also the roots are very sad.”
This latest release won’t be the end for Wine Ghost. Coffey plans to continue writing about their favorite boozy apparition. And Wine Ghost is already amassing a following. In Coffey’s office, Wine Ghost fan art is scattered among the Wine Ghost puppets: some figurines, a plushie and a painting of the character “getting blasted,” all created by friends and fans.
“Now, behind me, I have this little shrine to Wine Ghost,” Coffey said. “It’s like she’s watching over me, making sure I don’t mess up.”
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
