Brian Buniak (cartoonist for Mad Magazine, DC Comics and more) mailed in this unexpected review of the My Small Diary Collection:
I love Delaine’s “My Small Diary.” It is so good in so many ways. It’s fun… it’s quirky… it’s addictive. Her pages are like potato chips… you cannot stop with just one. If “My Small Diary” was a song I imagine it would be “Brand New Key” by Melanie.
Delaine’s cartoon version of herself is instantly recognizable. So much so that she made it into two of my projects for DC Comics. She was in the audience of Howard Coselle’s TV show “Saturday Night Live” cheering on the Backstreet Boys in “The Big Book of the 70s.” More recently I slipped a cheesecake shot of “our gal from AL” into the “Angel and the Ape” portion of “Joe Kubert Presents” #1. But perhaps my most successful drawing of Miss Derry/Green appears on page 106 of her small diary collection. She brought out the best in me.
My absolute favorite, no contest, drawing of Delaine by Delaine appears in the first panel of page 51. The “best bathing suit on the beach” pic. She is so utterly adorable in that panel. Everything… EVERY… THING about it works. I have it bookmarked so, whenever I’m feeling a bit blue or bleagh, I can quickly turn to it and, before you know it… bingo, bango, bongo… I’m smiling again.
Perhaps someone out there is reading this and wondering whether or not to give Delaine’s title a try. In all honesty you may not like it. There are no superheroes. No mutants. No altered DNA. No mad scientists. No mechas. No zombies. No time travel. None of that cool comic book stuff….
It is the illustrated diary of about a decade’s worth of life, love, hopes, dreams, triumphs, failures, embarrassments, tears, joy, laughter and just plain silliness presented to us in a winning way by one of the most marvelous women God ever pieced together.
No, this is not your typical cool comic book stuff. It is infinitely superior. You may not be able to handle it.
