Commies and comics

Its Booker-longlist nomination meant that Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina (Granta, £16.99) was the comic that everyone has heard of this year, even if it’s also the one most likely to give them post-traumatic stress. Drawn in deliberately bland colours and small, often wordless panels, this story about the human aftermath of a grisly American killing takes in internet paranoia, conspiracy theorists and the internet’s hyperspeed appetite for atrocity. But it’s also an intensely withdrawn book, full of desperate characters whose emotions vibrate at near-subperceptible frequencies. I admired it deeply, and I’d be happy never to think about it again.

Less emotionally stressful, though with deep seriousness lurking beneath its shrewd wit and artistic energy, is Jules Feiffer’s The Ghost Script (Liveright, £19.99), the third in a trilogy of graphic novels by a veteran cartoon satirist (Feiffer is 89). In straggly, super-vivid monotone art, it pays homage to the Spirit comics of Will Eisner, whom Feiffer once assisted, and the PI stories of mid-century Hollywood.