20 comics that can change your LIFE -NR.3

"Bomb Scare," Optic Nerve #8 by Adrian Tomine
I'm borderline-obsessed with angsty high-school stories — movies, music, books, you name it — and yet I've never read anything that felt as muted and true as "Bomb Scare." What struck me is how uncomfortable it made me, and yet how much I didn't want it to end. The comic depicts two teens — a bookish loner named Scotty, a party girl named Cammie — linked by their after-school job at a fast-food joint. Their young lives, like most, are full of shame and suckitude. But what Tomine really nails is how subterranean and baffling their own feelings are. By the time the story ends, I feel so unsettled and confused that I just don't know what to do. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how I felt in high school, too.