THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2026! There’s always been a haunting fragility to Zoe Delautre Corral’s work, both in terms of theme and presentation, that has given it an oddly hypnotic quality. Her latest short comic, The Lifespan of a Dragonfly, underlines exactly why I saw so much potential in her practice a couple of years back and why she was one of our Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch’ creators in 2024. Pensive, reflective and possibly eerily familiar in theme for many it’s an excellent entry point to her practice.
The Lifespan of a Dragonfly is an existential meditation that takes that titular seven-week existence as a starting point to initially explore very human ideas of mortality, with Delautre Corral posing herself the question “what would I do if my existence was so finite?”. From there it evolves into a reflection on body image and identity as a comic that began with a slice-of-life sensibility moves into the realms of visual metaphor and allegory.
Delautre Corral’s art eschews traditional panel structures, rather allowing sequential imagery to sit in a more freeform arrangement, images almost flowing into each other. There’s a delicacy to the second half of the comic as symbolism overtakes more traditional narrative and the dragonfly motif plays more directly into the comic’s themes.
There’s a lyrical quality to the artist’s words throughout, arguably taking this into the realms of graphic poetry for those with an interest in that burgeoning genre of comics. Beautifully illustrated with an evocative use of shading, shadow and light this is a comics short that reminds us of the promise of Delautre Corral’s work and the reason why she was longlisted for the First Graphic Novel Competition a couple of years back.
Zoe Delautre Corral (W/A) • Self-published
Buy online here after Thought Bubble
Review by Andy Oliver
Zoe Delautre Corral is at table B20b in the Bubbleboy Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2026 runs from November 9th-15th with the convention weekend taking place on the 14th-15th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2026 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster art by Núria Tamarit
