SABRINA - NICK DRNASO

I suppose it should not come as a surprise that Chris Ware’s influence all over these new comics. The clean lines, the flat color, the suburban midwestern milieu and the quiet desperation and sadness, Ware is all over this thing. I also see some Ivan Burnetti, especially in the simple style. In fact, the way Drnaso renders people can be so simple and unadorned in certain scenes it’s hard to tell characters apart. Though this is obviously on purpose, a nebulous sense of identity and even setting is a big part of this, especially with the characters who are in the military. Also Ware-like is the layout. Each page is a grid, for squares wide, 6 squares tall. Squares can be combined to form splash panels, but only in units of full squares, meaning the large panels are, say, 4x3 (half the page) or 2x2. To deepen the vibe, these panels are often silent panels of setting, breaking up panels of back and forth dialogue. And since the setting is pretty drab, a military base and surrounding areas in Colorado, these larger panels struck me as sad. I liked the plot, it concerns 2 friends that aren’t really friends with each other (since they’re both sad, quiet men in the Ware tradition) living together after the girlfriend of one goes missing. Eventually, we learn that she’s been killed on camera as a sort of terrorist act and the characters try to deal with it. For a while an Alex Jones like figure is telling people that the girlfriend’s (the titular Sabrina) death was a false flag operation. The comic was smart to not let this plot overtake the whole book. I was worried it would become about the fanatics or, worse, about getting to the bottom of Sabrina’s murder. But the book is actually about grief and male isolation so this aspect of the plot boils up and then just kinda fizzles away, just as it would in real life. Likewise, since there’s so much silence and things left unsaid and characters failing to communicate with each other, it’s jarring to see the panels where the radio host is going on about conspiracies since his ramblings take up basically all the space. It’s a good visual reminder about how isolated and alone the Alex Jones people are and how little human connection they have and how listening to someone on the radio or podcasts or whatever would feel like a good substitute for actual human connections. I’d never heard of this guy before but I really like this one. Gonna have to check out his first book. 2018 sad suburban men.