Shadowplay: Midnight School

Brazilian artist Fonesca debuts with a grandiose lament for the ways society can undermine and crush independent thinkers. At a hellish “midnight school,” sleepwalking students are belittled by devilish authority figures. A terrified, doe-eyed youth with musical ambitions, known only as “the boy,” tries to navigate this prison littered with anxiety-dream tropes (being naked and chased, teeth falling out). Even as he’s excoriated for his supposed disobedience by his captors, he tries to hang on to his musical ambitions. Eventually, a “girl” shows up, and the two bond while trying to escape the school’s demonic baddies. Fonesca’s drawing is delectably dark, with glowing pools of light cutting through inky-black cross-hatching. Unfortunately, the story—an overwrought individualist allegory in which every criticism is rendered as a soul-crushing assault on the boy’s fragile spirit—does not have anything close to the art’s density or texture. Despite the narrative’s earnest belief in the triumph of creativity, its eye-rolling adolescent excesses make it hard to take seriously. (Feb.)