So I Read Mesmo Delivery

A 250 word (or less) review of the Mesmo Delivery graphic novel
By Rafael Grampa, Dark Horse Books

Mesmo Delivery is, plot wise, a very simple book. In it delivery truck drivers Rufo, a retired boxer, and Sangrecco, a sometime Elvis impersonator, visit a truck stop and get into a street fight with some locals with violent and eerie results. But in all honesty, this isn’t a comic you read for the script. Mesmo Delivery exists to showcase Grampa's incredible artwork because holy shit is he talented. Grampa’s art has this exquisitely grotesque quality to it: everything is at once beautifully designed and kind of elegant but also brutal and careworn and abstractly ugly. The characters, backgrounds, and objects in the book are all endlessly fascinating to look at, but it’s the choreography of the book that makes it exceptional to me. The more conventional brawls are stylistic, well posed, and impactful, but as things spiral out of control, some truly amazing and horrifying examples of composition occur. There are things in this book that Rafael Grampa masterfully pulls off that I have never seen anyone even approach trying. At a certain point in the story it's just new thing after new thing after new thing. All pulled off with an effortlessly flair. I can't express how shockingly great and terrible the artwork in this book is. If you give Mesmo delivery a try I promise that you will see new things and that you'll have a new appreciation for the kinds of visual storytelling that are possible.

Word count: 240