Cornelius is a country dog who works cleaning at a gym. He has a couple of friends, a couple of enemies and a crush on a girl, a normal life that keeps feeling like an absolute loser. Done in as many visual styles as possible, with a gripping river story, hilarious gags and depressing reflections, ‘La alegre vida del triste perro Cornelius’ is, without a doubt, the best comic of the year. And the best part? Its author, Marc Torices, is surprisingly young… And from our country.
A depressing dog
‘Cornelius’ is at once absurd, precious, unsettling, thoughtful, hilarious and very, very sad. “Writer? Bah! That’s the stuff of pretending, you know? Pretending to do great thinking, faking a good story, faking depth… Copying… I’m sure you have a great future ahead of you in that, Cornelius!”, says one of the characters shortly after the beginning slapping the author himself. And this is the roller coaster moment of ascent.
Every few pages a laugh, a moment of feeling bad about yourself, the doubt about whether to feel pity or disgust for the protagonist. The best thing about a good complex story is that there are no good guys or bad guys: just gray people. And Cornelius never knows whether he acts the way he does out of foolishness, out of doubtfulness, out of a bad person, or out of that humanity one can only find in a comic book dog.
Do not believe, because of the fabulous cover that Apa-Apa has dedicated to it (where you can find it for 33 euros that, frankly, you will more than pay for it) that ‘Cornelius’ is a children’s work or, even more rancid, that because it is a comic book it is for all audiences. Without the need for shady scenes or explicit sex, this comic book is profoundly adult, a story that could only be told in cartoons. At a time when surprises are measured almost algorithmically, there is something in Marc Torices’ work that you won’t find in any other: overflowing originality and creativity.
A titanic, handcrafted work of eight years, aware that the Spanish cultural world is not capable of appreciating comics as an art on a par with cinema or painting. But it should: ‘La alegre vida del triste perro Cornelius’ is a masterpiece and a turning point in the history of modern Spanish literature, a comic to revisit again and again, to admire its stylistic exercise, its narrative capacity and its absolute freedom, as refreshing as it is emotional. In 2035 we will still be talking about ‘Cornelius’. And it will have more than deserved it.
