By Miguelanxo Prado
192 pages, color
Published by NBM
When Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Endless Nights graphic novel hit stores earlier this year, there were a lot readers who were unfamiliar with some of the artists that Gaiman chose to illustrate his stories. I remember hearing one person say, “Who’s this Miguelanxo Prado guy?” and have someone else tell him in confidence, “A new artist, but he’s really good.” Well, he might not be new, but he definitely is good—as his screwball Daily Delirium certainly illustrates.
Daily Delirium collects short vignettes (almost all in the two to four page range) by Prado that take an absurd look at life. What may start out simple—people talking about how a priest refuses to marry a loving couple, for instance—rapidly take a twist for the stranger as you discover that it’s a woman who wants to marry her parrot, for instance. Other stories simply take our every day life to a crazy extreme; televised court cases now with sports announcers and referees providing hand singles and a play-by-play description of what’s going on. The more you read of Daily Delirium, the more the strange world inside Prado’s book looks like the strange world outside your window.
Prado’s art reminds me a lot of Bill Plympton’s creations. At a casual glance, his characters look perfectly normal. There’s always just something that’s not quite right about them, though. The more you look at them, the more you’ll find the oddities. Is it the nose that’s too big? The ears? Something’s slightly disconcerting, but it’s not something you can ever really put your finger on. It’s a very deliberate style that Prado uses for Daily Delirium, and its slightly off-kilter look at the world is perfect for the subject material.
Where else can you find a woman being sued of plagiarizing her own life from a book? Prado’s Daily Delirium will have you laughing hysterically with each new entry, partially because you can’t imagine something so crazy happening, and partially because you can. Collecting three volumes of hilarity into English, Prado’s Daily Delirium is a great addition into the library who appreciates good satire. My only caveat is that is that because NBM has combined the three books into one, it’s best to be read in small doses. Too much at once has a somewhat numbing effect. Leave this on your coffee table and I promise you, you’ll have guests laughing for hours every time they pick it up.
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