David Lapham's Young Liars (DC Comics/Vertigo)

If you buy your comics at comic book stores, rather than newsstands, chances are you have come across Young Liars. If you haven't picked up a copy to at least leaf through, you should. Right away. In fact, you might want to just head back on over to the shop now and see if there are any issues in stock. Really. It's that good.

Written and illustrated by the excellent David Lapham, who also helms the brilliant though irregularly published Stray Bullets, Young Liars is an intricate tale concerning a group of young adults that is equal parts science fiction, drama, memoir, action, espionage, romance, and mystery. It is enthusiastically nonlinear and may require a few reads for it to begin to make sense (note: begin to make sense).

The overall plot roughly involves what may or may not be a conspiracy by a group of alien spiders ("The Spiders from Mars") to impregnate a female spider who has taken the form of a human girl named Sadie, in order to raise soldiers for their army to conquer Earth. Sadie, the object of affection of an obsessive Danny Noonan, the comic's main character, has a bullet lodged in her brain that disrupts her ability to reason or recall. As a result, Danny, who in fact shot her in a jealous rage, along with a group of...well, frenemies, try to keep her out of the trouble she so blithely gets in, while trying to throw the Pinkertons-representatives of the Spiders-off their trail.

It gets more complicated from there.

The surrealism of the plot coupled with the nonlinear structure in which it is told, nicely captures the main conceit of the book: that the characters can't tell whether what they experience and remember are just lies they tell themselves to cope with cope with their various addictions, compulsions, and obsessions. Even if you've read every issue, you can't be sure that you actually know what is going on.

Young Liars touches on self-destructive behavior, loneliness, youth, social expectations, sexual identity, child abuse, and addiction among other themes, but it's not a downer. There are some priceless absurdist moments here. And because you are trying to find (or perhaps imbue the series with) meaning, the weighty scenes, interspersed with black humor and pulpish action and/or science fiction, don't oppress.

It's hard to like any of the characters: characters that were likable one issue often become thoroughly unlikable the next. Yet, what is most compelling here is not the parts themselves necessarily, but the sum. And because each issue expands on a character or period of time, and sends it/them veering onto some crazy new path, it feels as though the comic is in a state of perpetual reveal, like ABC's television show Lost. The truth of what's really going on is always on the tip of your tongue; and when the actual truth is finally revealed, you'll harangue yourself mercilessly for missing it.

One year in, the pace has not slowed. In fact, issue 12 contains a bit of a reset, although starting there might leave you more confused than ever; it may actually be easier for you to buy one of the trade paperbacks collecting the first or second story arc.

But you should. Now. Really. It's that good.