Big Scoop of Ice Cream: 17 Short Stories

Barcelona native Delfa’s candy-colored debut collection creates an irresistible fun-house version of modern 20-something life where the mundane rubs shoulders with the magical. Her cartoon avatar, featureless except for a long nose and shaggy bangs, drifts through beer-fueled party conversations, lazy afternoons with dates, and the occasional late-night outing to pick up a curbside couch. She also talks to ghosts, makes water boil with her mind, carries a tiny man in her shirt pocket, and interrupts a beach trip to question the nature of reality: “The sky isn’t even blue.... We’ve been tricked!” In stream-of-consciousness text vignettes between comics, Delfa captures snippets of memory and ruminates on such images as “a girl who is transforming into something clearer in front of you while you are looking at her.” Delfa’s geometric, abstracted artwork, with faces built from simple shapes and cars and furniture that look like painted wooden toys, recalls modernist European cartoonists like Joost Swarte. But she has her own eye for visual experimentation and ear for the unspoken tensions and revelatory truths hidden within banal conversation. Playful and melancholy in equal measure, these stories establish Delfa as an international alt-comics talent to watch. Agent: Alessandra Sternfeld, AM Agency (July)