Washington White

Gentrification and institutional racism get the fun-house mirror treatment in this hyperkinetic conspiracy thriller debut by indie cartoonist Griffiths. Set in a future D.C., the labyrinthine plot concerns the deliberate proliferation of a mind-control disease known as Charisma. First exploited by a propagandist called The Rev’rund to drum up subscriptions to his racist newspaper, Charisma’s powers of suggestion are quickly recognized by Beltway insiders as a tool to reshape the capital’s demographics. Charisma, it turns out, can also be used to construct entire alternate worlds. Trafficked into these surreal landscapes, mind-controlled Black folks are conscripted to harvest more Charisma. A subplot draws on a real-life 1977 civil rights suit won by Griffiths’s grandmother, and the specters of redlining, the war on drugs, and slave auctions haunt every page. Exploding with plasticine figures and otherworldly architecture, Griffiths’s illustrations pair simple ballpoint pen with sherbet-hued digital color, managing both a scrappy roughness and bubblegum excess. The colorful 3D lettering can make legibility a challenge, though, particularly in dense blocks of exposition. Topsy-turvy political intrigues veer into uncertain terrain, but Griffiths’s social critiques rise up vibrantly. It’s a dizzying, maximalist romp. (Nov.)