Zonzo

The cover image of two blandly smiling, armless men—one wearing a “free hugs” T-shirt—represents the sensibility waiting inside Spanish cartoonist Cornelia’s second collection of disturbingly funny comics. Each wordless six-panel strip is fully painted in a bright, primary palette stolen straight from a set of finger paints; the characters are drawn in a similarly childlike manner. This sunny presentation forms a sharp contrast to the mostly violent and depraved goings-on. The humor comes from the blood-soaked ways that every strip is resolved, which usually involve shooting, stabbing, beheading, or some other violent eruption. In one strip, for instance, a man with a huge facial tumor shoots the head off a child and uses the body and the tumor to make a puppet that then entertains the child’s mother. No matter how gruesome the story, the characters end up with the same bland smile. Corneliá’s work—combining the surrealism of The Far Side with the fatalism of Perry Bible Fellowship—is an Internet favorite worldwide, and the images of ordinary people willfully submitting themselves to death or dismemberment for a chance at happiness capture an uncertain zeitgeist all too well. (Feb.)