Ardalén #[nn]

Miguelanxo Prado's *Ardalén*, published by Norma Editorial in 2012, announces itself with a hauntingly beautiful cover: an elderly man sits alone on a simple chair amid a shallow, luminous sea, cradling something small in his hands while a creature clings to his back — all surrounded by strange fish, a darting needle-like creature overhead, and distant palm-silhouetted shores bathed in blue-green light. The dreamlike imagery, rendered entirely by Prado himself as writer, artist, inker, and colorist, suggests a world where the boundaries between the waking world and something far more mysterious have quietly dissolved. It's the kind of cover that holds your gaze and pulls you in without saying a word.