No metaphor or hyperbole here — cartoonist Dash Shaw’s 2016 cinematic debut, My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea, is an indie animated feature that’s about exactly what its title claims. And what kid, present or former, didn’t dream about precisely that happening to their high school at least once?

And yet Shaw, in his capacity as writer/director, avoids romanticizing the youthful outsider, as one would assume he’d be inclined to do — in fact, his stand-in protagonist (also named Dash and voiced with considerable range and realism by Jason Schwartzman) comes off as both willfully delusional (he’s convinced that he’s the best writer in the school and that his newspaper is “making a difference” — while also less-than-begrudgingly admitting that he chases after banal gossip stores in an attempt to boost his readership) and, frankly, more than a bit of a jerk. His best friend/good-natured foil, then…

I’m utterly lacking in anything resembling a clever (or even a relevant) bit of preamble for this week, so let’s just dispense with the formalities and talk about some comics I read that you may — or may not, I won’t hold it against you — find of interest —

Vertigo founding editor Karen Berger seems to be in “full-steam ahead” mode with her Berger Books line at Dark Horse, with Emma Beeby, Ariela Kristantina, and Pat Masioni’s Mata Hari #1 marking the imprint’s third debut in, if memory serves me correctly, as many weeks (they might have taken a week off, I guess, it’s all a bit foggy at this point), and while this fairly nuts-and-bolts historical re-telling of the trial of the infamous spy/femme fatale presents a more sympathetic view of its subject than you’re likely to find from books authored by any of us goddamn men…

Here’s the thing — there are a million and one perfectly valid reasons for walking away from the first issue of writer David Barnett and artist Martin Simmonds’ Punks Not Dead, the latest offering from former Vertigo editor Shelly Bond’s new (-ish) Black Crown line at IDW, fairly unimpressed. For one thing, it seems to either not understand, or to deliberately eschew, punk’s radical politics in favor of glomming entirely onto its obnoxiousness. For another, it further cements the narrow aesthetic and editorial constraints that Bond has frankly shackled this entire label with since its debut a few months back. And for yet another, despite its present-day setting, its core premise is hopelessly dated and leaves the book wide open to charges of being the sort thing cooked up by people trying to be self-consciously “cool” — only their idea of what passes for “cool” is about 40 years…

Cartoonist Tommi Parrish comes to us from Montreal by way of an Australian upbringing, but their (as a gender non-binary individual, Parrish’s pronouns of choice are “they” and “their”) perspective seems to be a heady blend of the highly singular and the undeniably universal — and if that sounds inherently contradictory, then buckle in for a review that’s going to make your head spin, because the underlying tension between disparate polarities, both personal and artistic, forms the beating thematic heart of their new Fantagraphics-published graphic novel, The Lie And How We Told It, and how you process duality is going to go a long way toward determining your level of enjoyment of/appreciation for this work. In short, if it already sounds like it’s not going to be your cup of tea, then it probably won’t be — but if explorations of who we are vs. who we present ourselves…

Once again, and against all odds, the new release racks at my LCS featured a pretty decent selection of stuff worth both reading and talking about this week, so give me a second to roll up my sleeves here and I’ll get into it —

Twisted Romance #1 is the first of a four-part weekly “supernatural love”-themed anthology published by Image and spearheaded by writer Alex De Campi, who is here joined on the main feature, “Old Flames,” by the incomparable Katie Skelly — who probably should have been been given free reign on both story and art, since this succubus-themed tale is a decent enough little throwaway yarn, but certainly no My Pretty Vampire by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a crisp, breezy read that wisely allows the stylish and sharp visuals to pull most of the weight, but ultimately rather forgettable.

Fortunately, though, things improve as the…

It’s a difficult thing to process, Nathan Cowdry’s Shiner — on the one hand it’s not a terribly complex narrative, despite the fact that’s it’s ridden with flashbacks, fever dreams, and less-than-reliable Ps OV. Really, I’m not kidding, the whole thing fits together in near-meticulous fashion even though by all rights it probably shouldn’t. But there’s so much simmering below the surface that it’s well-nigh impossible to determine how you feel about it even after two, three, or (in my case) four readings. Can I definitively state that I “like” this comic? I’m honestly not sure. I can, however, state without hesitation that I’ve found it impossible to get it out of my head, and that alone makes it worth talking about in some detail.

There’s something unsettling and potentially dangerous about Cowdry’s obsessions — like fellow Japan-obsessed Brit Trevor Brown, he blurs the lines between sex and violence…