In Miguel Vila's graphic novel Comfortless, emotions are already at a breaking point and continue to fracture across a series of fervent vignettes, taking place in the Venetian region of Italy during Covid-19 and, eventually, in a speculative future. Translated from the Italian by Jamie Richards, Comfortless demonstrates Vila's expertise at exposing and exploiting the latent tensions. For instance, in the chapter aptly titled "Escalation," Irene "Ire" Bellamio becomes increasingly incensed by a man who takes masked jogs outside her window during lockdown. At first, she throws water balloons, but soon she graduates to arson, all while her friendship with Giulia undergoes its own frictions. Using a warm, soft palette of mostly pinks, purples, and reds, Vila (Milky Way) enhances a dissonance between emotional intensity and muted outward appearance. Vila often forgoes traditional equal-grid compositions for a range of styles that lend velocity and surprising white space to the project.
Comfortless has a large cast of characters, several in their 20s, whose lives have been upended by the lockdowns. The vignette characters reappear in other stories, and they contain a few intertwining through lines, including one that begins the book with a secret almost revealed between two friends, only to be interrupted and upended in multiple ways. However, the return to the secret at the end lends the book a satisfaction that, while hinted at in a few of the sections, becomes concrete with the final reveal. Comfortless offers an intense Covid-19 fever dream that will appeal to fans of Mattie Lubchansky's Simplicity. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator