Nick Drnaso

Nick Drnaso (born 1989) is an American cartoonist whose work represents a new frontier for the graphic novel as a literary form. Sabrina (2018) — a graphic novel about the aftermath of a young woman’s murder, the conspiracy theories that swirl around it, and the corrosive effect of information culture on private grief — was the first graphic novel ever longlisted for the Booker Prize. His visual style — flat colors, generic environments, figures drawn with a deliberate affectlessness — is as carefully calibrated as his narratives, and the combination produces work of unsettling power.

Life and Career

Drnaso grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a landscape of strip malls, parking lots, and tract houses that recurs throughout his work as a kind of American non-place. He studied at a community college and worked at a drawing school before becoming a full-time cartoonist. He was mentored by Chris Ware, and the influence is visible in his attention to design, his use of diagrammatic space, and his deadpan emotional register — though Drnaso’s work is distinctly his own.

Beverly (2016, Drawn & Quarterly) — his debut — is a collection of interconnected stories set in and around Chicago: a teenage girl’s party goes wrong, a woman’s marriage dissolves, a man starts a bizarre job. The stories are linked by place and by a pervasive atmosphere of low-grade dread — the feeling that something is wrong with American suburban life, not dramatically wrong but fundamentally wrong, in ways that no one can quite articulate.

Sabrina (2018, Drawn & Quarterly) was a critical sensation. The story follows Teddy, an Air Force serviceman in Colorado Springs, who takes in Calvin, the boyfriend of Sabrina, a young woman who has been murdered. A video of the killing surfaces online. Conspiracy theorists claim the murder was faked. Calvin spirals into isolation and paranoia. The novel captures, with documentary precision, the way contemporary media culture transforms private tragedy into public spectacle, how conspiracy thinking colonizes grief, and how the infrastructure of American life — military bases, talk radio, social media — produces a specific kind of loneliness.

Acting Class (2022) — about a group of strangers who join a drama class that becomes increasingly manipulative and controlling — extends his exploration of American anomie and the hunger for meaning in contexts that exploit that hunger.

Key Works

• Beverly (2016)
• Sabrina (2018)
• Acting Class (2022)

Collecting Drnaso

Beverly first edition (Drawn & Quarterly, 2016) brings $30–$75. Sabrina first edition (Drawn & Quarterly, 2018) signed brings $75–$200 — the Booker longlisting significantly increased demand. Drnaso is a young artist with a small bibliography, making first editions of all titles the obvious collecting targets. He has appeared at comics events and bookshops. Drawn & Quarterly first printings are the sole collected format.