Melissa, the protagonist of Escape from “Special” (Fantagraphics), is an odd sort of fusion of Dawn Wiener from Welcome to the Dollhouse and Daria Morgendorffer. If Daria is the acerbic iconoclast one wishes one had been, and Dawn is the needy abuse-magnet one fears one was, Melissa is probably closer to the reality.

She’s ill-equipped for the average school environment, outspoken and bright but miles behind other students because of time spent at an experimental school too respectful of self-esteem and self-directed learning to actually teach anyone anything. Placed first in her new public school’s remedial group, then pegged as brilliant thanks to the wonders of standardized testing, Melissa has seen the various disadvantages of being “special,” and she’d much rather be normal.

She’s alternately repulsed by convention and frustrated by her inability to adhere to it; her disapproval isn’t a mask for jealousy so much as its uncomfortable companion. Her contempt for schoolyard social norms is genuine, but so is her sometimes scorching need to adopt them, or at least pass.

Miss Lasko-Gross tells her story in a string of short vignettes, not all of which dwell on Melissa’s social struggles. We meet Melissa’s permissive, relentlessly positive parents, Jacqui and Tod, who take her to ashrams and on folk-band tours. There encounters with her child therapist, among my favorite scenes in the book, that Melissa views with all of the enthusiasm of a captured member of La Résistance. The diversions give Melissa some very welcome roundness as a character.

At the same time, it seems like Lasko-Gross is more of an observer than a storyteller. Appealing and effective as the vignettes are, they don’t accumulate into an entirely solid narrative. In a sense, that feels right, as the kind of messy, everyday life Lasko-Gross is portraying doesn’t lend itself to measured narrative momentum. But I still don’t think the book entirely overcomes its casual structure.

It does leave you with a vivid, indelible, ultimately sympathetic character in Melissa, though. Her blunt observations, rebelliousness and frustrations are presented with frank intelligence and rueful humor, and Lasko-Gross has a real knack for rendering pre-teen miseries (real and perceived) without a trace of condescension.

I think people sometimes avoid comics widely acknowledged as classics because the designation doesn’t promise a whole lot of fun. Somewhere along the way, the perception of a given body of work shifts from “something that people really enjoy” to “something that people deeply admire.” Personally, I’ll pick the likelihood of enjoyment over admiration every time, though there’s plenty of evidence that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Take Gilbert Hernandez’s Heartbreak Soup (Fantagraphics). It’s easy to see why the stories here have stood the test of time. With apparent effortlessness, Hernandez built the Central American town of Palomar into one of the richest, most absorbing fictional communities I’ve ever encountered. The pages burst with imaginative storytelling and sharply defined characters, and it’s the kind of book you want to savor.

I found that I wasn’t ultimately able to dose out the pleasure of the reading experience, because there was just too much of it. The collection was just too much fun to read, and restraint went out the window.

There was always someone new to meet, or more to learn about characters I already knew. The thrill of watching a bit of gossip – a local marital squabble or sexual indiscretion, or a childhood misadventure – polished into something like legend was too compulsively readable. The generous blend of humor, pathos, sex, friendship and family was just irresistible.

With a sprawling cast of characters young and old, good and bad, you’d think one or two would have emerged as clear favorites. Again, Hernandez’s creative generosity made this virtually impossible. There seemed to be no such thing as a throw-away character, no matter how brief their tenure on the pages. It could be argued that the women of Palomar have the edge; they run the place by virtue of a combination of hard-won wisdom, resourcefulness and independence. But while the men seem to have abdicated power in terms of the town’s social structure, they hold their own as layered, richly drawn contributors to Palomar’s fictional world.

As if all of this creative flourish and lovingly detailed emotional landscape wasn’t good enough, the collection is a steal. For just under $15, you get close to 300 black-and-white pages of comics that are as freshly engaging as they are undeniably groundbreaking.

Admiration, enjoyment and economy, all in one package. What more do you need?