Mis(h)adra

Originally serialized as a webcomic, Ata’s debut tells the story of Isaac, an Arab-American college student struggling with epilepsy. His seizures, and the auras that precede them, leave him exhausted and often bedridden. A series of unsympathetic doctors are convinced his episodes are merely anxiety attacks. Meanwhile, he’s on the verge of failing several of his classes due to unavoidable absences, and none of his friends seem to understand. Ata draws Isaac’s good days in sunny yellows and soft pinks. His seizures attack in vicious spikes of black and red, often shaking him for 10 or more pages at a time. The only warnings are the auras, visually represented as a net of knives hanging over Isaac’s head. Ata’s art is terrific at depicting the hellish seizures, but the overall story, which takes place mostly within Isaac’s thoughts as he heads for a somewhat anticlimactic breakthrough, suffers from a lack of grounding and detail. [em]Agent: Judy Hansen, the Hansen Agency. (Oct.) [/em]