Cartoonist McPhail's debut graphic novel follows a youngish artist's desperate search for authenticity in a culture where true selves hide behind performative, perfunctory interactions.Professional illustrator Nick Moss isn't sad but wants to be-at least for a night. He's heard of sad men being sad in sad bars, so he tries on the role for himself, but an attractive young woman named Wren playfully calls him out on his artifice. This meet-cute leads to a fun, steamy, no-strings-attached affair, which weaves through Nick's everyday struggles to form meaningful connections to his fellow humans-strangers, neighbors, and family alike. Eventually he learns to lean into awkward encounters and finally say something that matters to the other person-transcendent moments that McPhail brings to life by fantastically transporting Nick to vibrant, inspiring vistas for the duration of these fleeting epiphanies. McPhail's art is exceptional-realistic if impressionistic settings and anatomic figures with cartoonish accents like bug eyes and overemotive gestures. The visuals are scrumptious and the yearning for personal connection is deeply relatable, but the story loses focus with observational bits about pretentious coffee shops and corporate jargon, and the central romantic relationship has a bit too much of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl dynamic to fully resonate. But even when beats feel overly familiar, McPhail presents them with style and grace, deftly moving the story along with subtle, impactful visual cues. Nick isn't an especially likable character, save for the relatability of his desires, but the eyes McPhail gives him-perfect white circles with pinprick pupils-imbue the awkward and borderline-unpleasant character with the charm of an earnest boob. What more could anyone be when faced with their place in the universe?Gorgeous navel-gazing.

Though snarkier and smuttier than E.M. Forster, New Yorker cartoonist McPhail-s graphic novel debut comes across as a book-length illustrated version of the Howard-s End epigraph: -Only connect!- Nick is an artist whose cringey awkwardness and roiling inner monologues (-Is this what human interaction is?-) block him from forming relationships. He compensates with personas, such as posing as a sad young artist sketching women on the train (until he discovers they find it creepy rather than cute). Even a joyful-seeming one-night stand with brash young doctor Wren is drawn in a one-page vignette as a kind of theater (with curtains and stage) to demonstrate Nick-s disconnection (-I didn-t feel anything and performed every emotion-). The narrative takes an unexpected turn when Nick suddenly decides to say something personal in a glorious scene that mixes the rapturous (a montage of fantastical lush color frames in this cool and restrained black-and-white book) with the comical (the man he-s connecting with is his plumber). But though Nick-s arc toward authenticity is well rendered, it-s too easily won, with a world willing to accommodate him the second he opens up and a convenient manic-pixie love interest. This smart if somewhat uneven character study bangs together insecure urban hipster humor with raw emotion. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (May)