Acclaimed Spanish comics artist Prado (Streak of Chalk) will not win new fans with this disappointing collection of graphic short stories surveying the poignancy and instability of a series of unconnected love affairs. These inert vignettes pretend to an unsentimental insight into the impermanence of relationships (and the routine solace of sex), but their characters' stilted exchanges more often provoke an involuntary grimace. The best story, ""Ballad for Sax and Neon,"" presents a bad writer's dilemma in a dream sequence, providing a glimpse of lyric fantasy and an unpretentious emotional clarity missing from the other entries. But in ""Sparkles in the Glass,"" in which a writer pontificates about art and love rather than undress for his lover, or in ""Delayed Dusk of October,"" in which an artist and his model make love as prelude to ending their affair, the wan scenarios and affected dialogue fall flat. There is much nudity and lovemaking, both generally tastefully depicted. In this case, Prado's expert color drawings, delicately varied in style and with a rich range of moody ochres, grays and browns, signal and maintain the emotional tone of the stories far better than the writing. (May)
