Shadower

Coin-Op comics’ Hoey siblings (In Perpetuity) serve up an unsettling postmodern espionage thriller with undertones of Hitchcockian suspense and Kafkaesque absurdity. In an unnamed city reminiscent of Cold War–era Eastern Europe, Nadia, a drama student, is enlisted by one of many warring political factions to spy on another. She’s trained to pose as an unassuming cafe waitress named Miriam and serve coffee to a man called O’Brien—the dialogue acknowledges the reference to Orwell’s 1984—from a bugged samovar. Nadia draws on the acting technique developed by her late father, a drama scholar and author of “The Methodology of Disappearing” who advised, “Leave no trace of yourself; only the role will remain.” As Nadia pries into the past of the woman she’s portraying, she begins to transform into Miriam, her performance becoming too complete. The style is typical of the Hoeys: crisp, diagrammatic, and strongly influenced by Chris Ware. The geometric layouts seem to observe Nadia dispassionately, much like the surveillance state, and the flat color and doll-like figures give her world an artificial, staged look. Despite these distancing effects, a sense of paranoia is palpable—disappearances and deaths fill daily life, strangers seem inexplicably hostile, and spotlights appear out of nowhere. Crafted with mousetrap precision, this claustrophobic tale of identity and performance haunts. (Mar.)