Comics.

Kyle Baker's graphic novel SPECIAL FORCES (Image, paper, $16.99) reads at first like a nearly straightforward military fantasy, drawn with a peculiar hybrid of hyperrealistic precision and nutty exaggeration. Eventually, though, Baker bares his fangs: the book is the harshest, most serrated satire of the Iraq war yet published. These forces are ''special'' as in ''Mama says I'm special'' -- the unstoppable American soldier Zone is severely autistic, which is why he's so good at following orders. And the story's plot, it gradually becomes clear, proceeds from the premise that every lie the Bush administration told about the war was true. So terrorists declare, ''We hate your freedom''; felons forced into military service become brave tactical geniuses who wouldn't dream of hurting children; and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are not only real but concealed in an oil refinery, where Americans would never think to look because of course the war wasn't about oil. The style and tone of Gabrielle Bell's comics are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Baker's -- flat, dry and understated -- but they allow her, too, to get away with just about anything. The brief title piece of her collection CECIL AND JORDAN IN NEW YORK: Stories (Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95) is narrated by a young woman who's just moved to the city with her filmmaker boyfriend; it's a clear-cut tale of impecunious 20-something artists until halfway through, when the narrator abruptly transforms herself into a chair, gets taken home by someone who finds her on the sidewalk and decides that her old life won't miss her. The engine of these mercilessly observed stories is squirminess: emotional awkwardness so intense that it can erupt into magic or just knot itself into scars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]