We’ve all been there.
School. A seemingly endless torment of hardships alongside physical, emotional and psychological suffering.
And then there was homework!
I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. I always enjoyed school, whether elementary or secondary or post-secondary. Sure, like many others, I saw some things – interactions between students as well as exchanges between teachers and students – that haunt me even now. Weird things, cruel things, violent things. These incidences were unfortunate elements of human existence that were planted in those early grades and then maliciously sown later, in our more difficult teenage years.
It’s a story as old as there was a classroom setting, which goes way, way back in time. High school is a litmus test for environmental survival. In the hallways and classrooms, gymnasiums and theatres, parking lots and sports fields, demons and predators rule the day – and night.
Smart students and lucky students, students with good friends and students who are aware of traps and cunning marauders, might be able to make it through the school years. Luckily that’s most of us. But school can still be a nightmare existence for many.
Today sees the release of a graphic novel that harkens those terrible scenarios and takes them to their grotesque extremes in a frightening and wholly thrilling fantasy-horror narrative. The first volume of a long-form story about students, teachers and the educational experience begins with the trade paperback: Shadowplay Book 1: Midnight School.
Written and illustrated by Brazilian creator, Sam Fonseca (Age of Rust, Dynamite & Laser Beam) and published by Top Shelf Productions, Shadowplay Book 1: Midnight School is a 424-page modern goth and psychological treatise on the individual, creative pursuits, friends, terrifying teachers and the horrible confines of the educational system.
School is a fever dream. A nightmarish and depressive existence. Teachers are demon headmasters inflicting terror upon their pupils. Worse still, while exploring their talents in music and writing and other forms of creativity and self-expression, students cannot even remember how they got trapped in this forlorn existence. Barbed wire fences surround them, torture devices need to be navigated alongside sadistic suspensions. How might they ever escape their hopeless confines in order to live and breathe a free life?
Shadowplay Book 1: Midnight School is a heightened nihilistic take on our own remembrance of what our schooling careers might have been like. It’s stunning black and white pages, pages that erupt with riveting colour at opportune and important moments, engage and swallow readers whole into a narrative stew of survival.
Still, despite all the bleakness, Shadowplay Book 1: Midnight School reminds us thatduring these formative years, hope springs in the discovery of individualistic self-expression. And that’s something work fighting and persevering for!
Make the run to your local bookstore or better comic book shop and pick up the riveting Shadowplay Book 1: Midnight School today!
For a more fulsome taste of the classroom, you can catch the trailer for Shadowplay Book 1: Midnight School directly below.
