Customer Reviews

The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was introduced to Joe Daly via Scrublands. I liked the weird Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers / Zippy the Pinhead feel to the stories. But Scrublands really didn't showcase Daly's artistic talents like RMDH does.

I was really very impressed with Daly's progression as an artist. In RMDH, the lovingly rendered South African backgrounds share center stage with the quirky caper storyline. The landscapes and architecture shimmer in the warm sun and the colors are vibrant.

I loved the 2 stories. Both were just incredibly silly. I laughed out loud several times.

Daly is my new favorite artist and I would love to see more nutty, surreal, quirky South African based stories involving the appealing troglodytic slacker protagonists he introduced in this book.

Dave is an artist with monkey feet living in South Africa, writing and drawing comics and doing design work for companies to make rent. His best friend, Paul, is a unemployed stoner who gets Dave into scrapes and then helps him back out. In this book there are two stories featuring the duo: The Leaking Cello Case, a short comic about a mysterious knocking above Dave's apartment, and John Wesley Harding, a much longer story about the mystery of the drying up wetlands, a complicated conspiracy involving microwave technology, and a missing capybara.

Joe Daly's artwork is amazing. The drawings are clear and detailed and he captures life in South Africa beautifully from the city streets to the isolated wetlands. The colours leap out at you and the overall look is a very attractive comic.

The stories are reminiscent of Tintin with Dave as Tintin and Paul as Captain Haddock. The two get into adventures easily and dash about, following shady looking characters in cars, overhearing conversations in warehouses, breaking into compounds, wandering about wetlands at night, and there's a lot of humour here too, though more of a stoner variety than Herge's slapstick.

The good natured storytelling and easy rhythm of the comics make for a very enjoyable read and, though I hadn't heard of Joe Daly until recently, I'll definitely check out more of his work having read this. A great comic book read and lots of fun, recommended!

The main characters of Red Monkey are close to the dictionary definition of slackers. Dave is a freelance designer with an unfortunate tendency to anthropomorphize his work -- he's put faces on bricks on the first page of this graphic novel, which his client does not appreciate -- who hates working for "mundane people" and would rather be smoking weed. His buddy Paul doesn't even have the semblance of a day job; he's just a mooch who sometimes makes a few bucks selling craft items to other stoners. Dave is the red monkey of the title -- he has feet like hands, which allow him to climb very quickly. "Double Happiness," on the other hand, is the name of a Chinese restaurant run by one of his neighbors; it's mostly in the title to show that there are two separate stories here --"The Leaking Cello Case," which was serialized in SL magazine and published separately (presumably in South Africa) in 2003; and the much longer and new "John Wesley Harding."

Both stories see Dave and Paul get involved in vaguely shady -- but entirely weird -- dealings. These are basically stoner crime stories, with Dave and Paul as relative innocents who get caught up in hallucinogenic toad trafficking, or secret microwave generators that destroy wetlands. Daly doesn't rely too heavily on stoner humor, thankfully, but Dave and Paul are discursive and occasionally addled, and they wander through the stories with the good-natured nonchalance of men who've got a lot of good bud behind them. Daly keeps these as stories about stoners rather than as stoner stories -- this isn't the way Dave would tell the story (thankfully); it makes more sense than that.

I saw a review of this book a while ago and it was on my list to read. Maybe I should have waited longer, it was amusing but not one of my favorites. I will keep it and reread and see if it gets better with time.

even though there are 2 stories in the 111 pages long book they are so slow moving the book is pretty boring. a lots of text where the same things are over and over again. i had problems because it couldnt hold my attention.
pretty weak and not up to fantagraphic standards.
pictures are incredibly detailed with great colors... but it doesnt make up for the weak story.