> GRAPHIC NOVELS MIKE DONACHIE

SABRINA By Nick Drnaso Drawn and Quarterly; 204 pages; $30.34 This book takes an emotional toll, but it’s worth it.

Sabrina is a masterful work of subtle storytelling. Its impact is hard to describe and Drnaso earns the respect he receives as a cartoonist.

It’s about Sabrina, a missing woman, and the people connected to her.

It’s also about the effect tragedy has on them and how it ripples out into their own worlds, affecting acquaintances who didn’t even know those involved.

It’s more than that, though. It’s about the times we live in, when we’re so connected by technology but separated by our own efforts to cope.

This book’s a character study and more.

It’s an exercise in tonal storytelling, with depth of feeling delivered incrementally by Drnaso’s simple art style and minimal dialogue.

This is the best book I’ve read this year, and it made me feel like crap. How about that? SOMNAMBULANCE By Fiona Smyth Koyama Press; 368 pages; $38.99 Arguably, one of the great joys of illustrated stories is the way they let people express themselves. The filters — and the gloves — come off, and somebody’s bare thoughts are right there on the page, unavoidable and glorious.

That’s what Fiona Smyth’s work is all about. In Somnambulance (out June 8 but much admired at last month’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival), Koyama has gathered more than 30 years of her comics in the beautiful collection they deserve.

These are feminist comics, for sure. There’s l ove, sexuality, gender and style on every page in images that draw you back, again and again. The images and stories are often challenging, but that’s part of why they’re great art.

And Smyth has something important to say. She’s speaking for so many women here. Let’s all hope she does it for another 30 years and more. DASTARDLY & MUTTLEY By Garth Ennis, Mauricet and John Kalisz DC Comics; 160 pages; $20.10 Cartoon characters getting their own, reimagined, comicbook series is a thing now, and none have been more fun than this reboot of Dastardly & Muttley. Alongside a successful ongoing Scooby Doo series, and teamups between the likes of Batman and Elmer Fudd, we have the creator of Preacher writing the flying twosome in all their bickering, snickering glory. It’s fabulous.

Having picked this up out of weird curiosity and as a diehard Ennis fan (read DC’s Hit- man books if you haven’t already), I had low expectations. I was laughing aloud, in public, while reading the third panel of page one.

It’s a little more realistic than the original cartoon. U.S. Air Force personnel Atcherly and Muller are flying a mission that goes awry thanks to an unprecedented threat to civilization: a weapon that turns people into cartoons.

Superbly satirical and really fun, it’s a rassin’, frassin’ hit. SHARKASAURUS By Spencer Estabrooks and Jethro Morales Renegade Arts Entertainment; 96 pages; $19.99 Leave all your preconceptions behind and just enjoy the ride with this one. Yes, it is what it seems: a story about a shark-like dinosaur.

Don’t expect valid scientific principles, either.

In the tradition of the movie Sharknado (that’s a tornado full of sharks, as we all know), this supremely silly book has a prehistoric dino-shark bursting out of millions of years of hibernation to launch a campaign of hideous violence against, well, everybody within biting distance. Entertainingly, the main character “swims” through the ground, leaving a devastated golf course and mangled corpses in its earthy wake.

But this isn’t a mindless book to match its monster.

We also get a Romeo and Juliet-style story pairing the son of a paleontologist with the daughter of a creationist. Can their families team up to save them?

It’s profane, violent, sexual and exploitative, and worth picking up. It’s Canadian, too.