The moment Nick stops berating himself for his inadequacies, the baton for that task is snatched up by his mother, sister, neighbors, 4-year-old nephew and romantic interest, Wren, who is an especially well-developed character. The characters in In are absolutely delightful. If you’re feeling attacked, or if you’re Timothée Chalamet, please read on. In has echoes of the 2012 black-and-white film A Coffee in Berlin and Ben Lerner’s many disaffected “lost boys of privilege.” That In is semiautobiographical lends both tenderness and a self-implicating edge to McPhail’s lampooning of the “woke millennial hipster.” The watering holes Nick frequents (albeit with scorn) have whimsical names like Gentrificchiato and Your Friends Have Kids Bar, and are “managed/haunted by a collection of Timothees Chalamet.” McPhail suggests a playful dichotomy in which you are either a person who posts up in coffee shops or are emotionally well. Here, the narrative power of images speaks for itself.

Splashes of crumbling landscapes, towering edifices and bizarrely cute flesh-eating monsters illuminate the pages like fever dreams. When Nick does succeed in making a connection, these moments of emotional disorientation erupt with color. Real human interactions likewise feel imminent but elusive, unlockable only with the right words.

His feelings are just out of reach, as if on the tip of his tongue. As the book opens, Nick goes to a bar alone because if he were sad-which he isn’t-that is what a sad man would do.

With generous wit and mostly black-and-white drawings, In follows Nick, an artist trapped in a cycle of hollow conversations and extra-milky lattes. In his breakout graphic novel, New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail charts a millennial’s ungainly journey toward emotional connection.

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