The Gory and the Glory: A Look Inside Joan Cornellà’s Mox Nox

The Gory and the Glory

A Look Inside Joan Cornellà’s Mox Nox

R. W. Watkins

I don’t know what to make of Spanish artist Joan Cornellà. Is he a dark-minded genius with a simplistic yet relatively unique approach to social satire? Or is he merely some one-dimensional prankster who likes to deliver pointless deviant gags in a minimalist context?

Fantagraphics’ recent collection of Cornellà’s wordless six-panel comic strips, Mox Nox (not to be confused with his collection of the same name published by Bang Ediciones in 2013), does nothing to clear the smoke and ease my indecision (or indigestion). For better or worse, the man seems caught between categories and mindsets. Dynamically, his panels may be silent, so to speak, but he’s no Jim Woodring when it comes to subtlety and sophistication of vision. And Mox Nox is certainly no Frank collection; surrealism is confined to the grotesque, and neo-pschedelia doesn’t dare show its nose:

Born in Barcelona in 1981, Cornellà won the third Josep Coll Prize in 2009 for his Abulio collection, and has since become a regular cartoonist at Spanish magazine El Jueves (the same magazine from which fourteen senior cartoonists resigned in 2014 following the publisher’s withdrawal of an issue that featured a front-cover Manel Fontdevila cartoon spoofing King Juan Carlos’s abdication). Apparently, Cornellà has also done illustrations for The New York Times, which leaves me wondering how such freelancing compares with Ed Fotheringham doing illustrations for The New Yorker, and whether or not Mudhoney would ever let the man come near their album covers.

It is interesting to note that Mox Nox is a Latin phrase meaning “Soon night arrives”. In this collection, however, the darkness exists merely at the figurative level, for the majority of these strips are as vibrant and colourful as the Nancy or Family Circus strips of one’s youth. According to a promo page on the Fantagraphics website, “Cornellà’s humor mixes the absurdist comedy of Michael Kupperman with the transgressive, political incorrectness of Johnny Ryan”. Maybe so, but given their juxtaposition of mundane cuteness with grotesque horror, I’d suggest that these strips more resemble a multi-panelled answer to Raymond Pettibon’s album covers; or a simplistic, non-literate version of Miriam and (brother) Ezra Elia’s We Go To The Gallery; or even Scott Adams’s Dilbert taken to a new extreme. Regardless of comparison, the generic malignant smiles coupled with the ghastly inhumane acts make for a reading, er, viewing experience that borders on the downright gladiatorial:

A genuine satirical statement about widespread indifference and contemporary Western priorities? Or merely testing the limits for the sake of testing the limits – à la Mike Diana in the days of Boiled Angel?

In Cornellà’s defence, I must concede that wordless panels are universal in communicating their message – regardless of what that message may be. Also, the strips’ simplistic style is a refreshing break from the computer-modelled ‘realism’ that assaults us from the comic racks these days. However, a cute and cartoonish murder is still a murder, nonetheless, and the extreme juxtaposition of mundane cuteness and unspeakable cruelty may actually subtract from any intended satire by rendering such strips ridiculous beyond an ounce of belief and apathetic to the point of possessing no socially redeeming value.

And this predicament extends to the artist himself, ultimately. Joan Cornellà walks a fine line with this collection, indeed. Dark-minded social satirist with a serious message or simply a prankster out to shock? You be the judge.