Alfonso Font’s “Dark Stories” – Does He Go Too Far?

I have to warn you in advance. “Dark Stories” is not a bright and cheery book.

It’s dark.

Very, very dark.

It makes Andre Franquin’s “Die Laughing” look like a children’s book.

You may need a shower after reading it.

The Credits Signal the Beginning of the Pain

Short, Dark Stories of Death and Dismemberment and People Being Evil

It’s almost easy to picture this book being a comedy. The elements are very similar. If Font had gone a slightly different way with some of these stories, we might be looking at the kind of dark humor that someone writing for “MAD” may one day have peddled.

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

Mel Brooks

But Font goes further. He plays it straighter. These are stories of people doing heinous things to each other, including cannibalism, beheadings, using random torture tools on panel, straight up murder, and much more. They’re meant to show how sadistic and mean people can be, though a few of them do lapse into the nearly comedic. (I was grateful for those.)

How do you show the worst of humanity without just depressing the heck out of the reader? What’s the fine line you need to walk?

The book is a collection of short stories Font did for a series back in the 70s and 80s. They’re mostly two pages, while the last couple of stories go longer. They’re nice bite-sized chunks of story with a purpose and strong, often twist, endings.

Since they’re so short, the pages are packed full of panels and word balloons, with a few exceptions.

Let’s talk about a few of them:

“A Matter of Advertising”

This early story in the book might just be my favorite. Font’s storytelling craft is on grand display here, as the first page is a nine panel grid showing a soldier in Vietnam coming out of the jungle to fire on a local village. Each panel has a strong composition and the storytelling is clear as can be.

The yellow coloring for the background keeps everything consistent down the page and keeps the soldier separated from the background.

It continues down the first two-thirds of the second page, getting more violent, until the big twist at the end, which is so over-the-top crazy and heinous that you have to laugh. Or cringe. It all depends on your own sense of humor. But if you’ve read this far down the review already, I think it’ll work for you.

“The Pep Talk”

This is a short story, with three wide panels on each page. It’s a quick gag that feels a bit almost like a Don Martin cartoon, but with more serious side effects. I like the simplicity of this one, as well as its humor. If you like “The Bluecoats,” this is almost slapstick in that fashion.

“Technical Failure”

This one is both funny and deplorable — in other words, the best of “Dark Stories.” It’s about a beheading that goes wrong and the insistence that it goes right on the part of the executioners.

One might choose to read it as an indictment of the blood thirsty desires of death penalty absolutists, or just see it was a twisted look at an extreme situation that comes out pretty funny if you’re into that warped kind of humor. Your choice.

Font uses a dotted DuoTone kind of shading in this story that gives it a neat look. He uses it in some other stories in the book, too, but not all. It works well to add shade against some pretty strong light sources here.

“The Wake”

This is a great two pager for pointing out of those things we all see in humanity all the time, but never change: the ability to hate someone and point out their flaws, but then be horribly sad when they’re dead.

Font pulls this off nicely, making the living look truly like a bunch of the most hypocritical SOBs you can imagine. He’s not trying to take a pragmatic stance with this story; he’s swinging straight at those who really milk it for all they can get.

It’s also a story without graphic violence. So long as you can take an open casket wake, you’ll be fine with the grossness of this particular story.

“The Story Without an Ending”

This one is hurt by its lack of purpose. It does exactly what the title says: It follows a family on a really bad day for all of them, and we get to see all those bad moments. Things just get progressively worse and then awful and then the story ends.

It’s just a bit creepy and revels too much in the bleakness of humanity for no good reason to be entertaining at all. It’s also the second time where there’s a child in danger thing at the end that just isn’t terribly necessary and feels a little thrown in to just add to the misery.

We all have our lines in the sand we draw, and it’s not until we read a book like this, really, that we find out where that line is.

“The Parable of the Unknown Martian”

The final story runs six pages

Alfonso Font draws himself as an artist looking for inspiration. When an alien lands, things don’t go quite how you might expect. People on the street mistake the alien for some kind of marketing gimmick.

This one verges into the political. It’s too on the nose and simplistic to strike a solid cord as a political thing even as it strikes some current political notes, but I liked it for its comedic values.

It’s also nice to see Font focusing more on his acting chops with the art. There are some very simple pages to this story, with just a character or two acting towards each other. They feel very Eisner-ian, except with the panel borders drawn in.

Print Versus Digital

This is an interesting case. The print edition of this book is 96 pages long. The back half is a Font art book.

The digital version only contains the first 48 pages, which make up the stories of “Dark Matter.”

Here’s a video look at the full print edition:

Alfonso Font’s “Dark Stories”: Recommended?

Maaaaaybe? It’s a rough book. It’s beautifully illustrated and the stories are told well, but the material is really difficult to find enjoyment from. (I skipped over the Holocaust story, which is extremely warped and, even worse, based on a true story that’ll make you question humanity all over again…)

Or I’m getting old and watching Disney Channel with my kid has softened me too much.

One or the other.

Font’s a great cartoonist. The material is difficult, and will likely go over your particular line once or twice.

— 2019.033 —

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