Shadowplay: Midnight School by Sam Fonseca
Preview Pages:
Review:
It’s not often that a comic—in this case a fully contained OGN—or any book can bury its audience in such a quagmire of hopelessness that it is also able to pull them back out. The “Dystopian” shelves would be filled were there any shelves of bookstores and libraries left. As of now, there are some buildings that still stand and have not been invaded by armed forces of DOGE. That’s America’s reality even though Sam Fonseca’s comic book depicts such events.
While wars, starvation, oppression, and fascists rise, they come to power with evil magical circumstances like enormous ghostly monsters that only the neurodivergent, unnamed protagonist can see. He can only see them after he begins awakening from a mass-fugue state (for lack of better explanation). Time passes on the outside of the Midnight School, but not inside its barriers where the hero, the heroine, and the best friend are trapped with other students.
The faculty and staff are there to encourage hatred and humiliation. Much like the “Aunts” of The Handmaid’s Tale, the adults of this situation didn’t have the willpower to resist the evil; and so, they succumbed doing its bidding by making students ooze fear and desperation for the growing monsters to feed upon. Another element here which appears across stories of oppression is that no one has a name except the dog. Whether the character is “24601” from Les Mis, “Offred/Ofjoseph” et al. from The Handmaid’s Tale, or the woman trapped in a room with only her mind in The Yellow Wall-Paper. Here in Shadowplay, the dog is Lupo and as a gratifying spoiler to ease the tension during reading, the dog is real and does live. Does this hero or any of his friends get names? Not yet, but they have another chance in the next book.
Sure, everyone has had a bad day in school, but not like this. This isn’t even Groundhog’s Day where there’s meant to be improvement. It’s the quicksand that sucks Atreyu’s horse to its death in The Neverending Story. The more a student tries to think independently or express that they’re hurt, the deeper into trouble they get.
The hero is one of the most fascinating characters of comics.
In superhero comics, it’s expected that characters (good and evil, lawful or unlawful) will have opportunities to turn their lives around. Shadowplay does have magic and some kind of curse, but that’s not the real story. It’s a bit like believing in Santa Claus or clapping loud enough to make Tinkerbell heal or Dumbo getting a feather to fly. The hero has to find the strength to get the voices out of his head that constantly repeat that he’s worthless, a baby, a pervert, stupid. He’s never given a break from the voices until sounds: hear his dog barking. This hero is alive by sounds. He has synesthesia, a rare condition where the senses are mixed up. He’s possibly dyslexic or has a different learning disability. Yet, it’s the synesthesia and his brother’s advice from his childhood that makes this hero’s heart beat. He needs to hear sounds and music especially.
All senses—truly sensual or somatic—play roles in Shadowplay’s characters’ arcs. The book is stark in black and white with tiny glimpses of blood red as blood or a woodpecker’s cap. The red color is the first to flood back into the hero’s world. Red for rage, passions, the blood of life, raw powerful emotion.
Sam Fonseca gives readers a chance to experience the hero’s musical soundtrack inside his mind. At the end of the book is a QR code which will go to Fonseca’s website with an embedded playlist. It combines thrashing metal, arcade game synthesizers, and fantasy realm interludes.
Summary:
Shadowplay—Midnight School is for anyone who has doubted themselves; been told that they won’t amount to anything; anyone who went far too long without a diagnosis in order to get proper help; and pretty much, anyone scared about the world around us.
Rating: 5 stars
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.