The Eisner Award winning DAYTRIPPER follows Bras de Olivias Dominguez during different periods in his life, each with the same ending: his death.DAYTRIPPER follows the life of one man, Bras de Olivias Dominguez. Every chapter features an important period in Bras’ life in exotic Brazil, and each story ends the same way: with his death. And then, the following story starts up at a different point … different point in his life, oblivious to his death in the previous story-and then also ends with him dying again. In every chapter, Bras dies at different moments in his life, as the story follows him through his entire existence-one filled with possibilities of happiness and sorrow, good and bad, love and loneliness. Each story rediscovers the many varieties of daily life, in a story about living life to its fullest-because any of us can die at any moment.
more
Daytripper
“My name is Brás de Olivia Domingos. This is the story of my life. Take a deep breath, open your eyes and close the book.”
Very few graphic novels are literature. Very few graphic novels are poetic. Daytripper is both.
Daytripper is eleven stories of the main character Brás in various stages of his life. His life is always the same; he is born during a power outage in Brazil, he is a writer of obituaries and of books. He has a wife and children and he dies. In fact, he dies in each of the stories, but in the next one, he is alive and older. If you take away the deaths, each story combines to make a well-lived life.
The art is hauntingly dreamlike, colored in a style that makes every scene glow with the faded luminescence of twilight. I read it on a Kindle (it was free to Amazon Prime members) and I would recommend reading it on a tablet.
Gasp!
The Kindle application (and probably others) allows you to read a comic one panel at a time, enlarged to take up the whole screen and that allows the reader to really concentrate on each panel, to take it slow, and absorb the work of art that is each moment of the story, instead of shooting from frame to frame. And that might be the hidden meaning within a larger story that is arguably one of the greatest works of graphic storytelling ever created.
I’m not being hyperbolic. It is fantastic. Even if you don’t like comics, you might just love Daytripper.
Daytripper is by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon and published by Vertigo.
Daytripper is a graphic novel by Brazilian brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. The two have illustrated American comics in the past (notably the Umbrella Academy series from a few years back that was popular with the artier portions of the comics readership), but I think they might be better known in other parts of the world. I remember Daytripper receiving quite favorable critical reviews when it appeared in serialized single-issue form in 2010, though I passed it by at the time. I think now doing so was a mistake and am glad that my brother sent me the collected version last Christmas.
The story follows Brás, a journalist in his early 30s whose career is stuck at a small newspaper in Sao Paulo, where he writes the obituaries. To make matters worse, his father is a famous and respected novelist in Brazil whose accomplishments will always overshadow Brás’s, no matter what he does. He’s depressed over having to attend a reception for his father, although things are looking up when his best friend Jorge, a staff photographer, also ends up assigned to the reception. At the end of the first chapter, Brás is unexpectedly shot in a robbery at a bar near the reception hall, and the final words are his own obituary.
This sets the pattern for each of the ten chapters (corresponding to the ten original issues), each of which visits Brás at a certain period in his life and ends with his death, giving the overview of his life up to that point in obituary form. Obviously, the point here is not a straightforward narrative of his life; indeed, the chapters are not even in chronological order, jumping around to various important points in his childhood, adulthood, and old age.
Rather, I think the purpose is to show how the meaning of Brás’s life changes with the context, his roles as lover, friend, son, father, husband, employee, and so on coloring the way his life is interpreted with each succeeding obituary. It’s not surprising that Brás has a certain everyman quality about him, allowing the reader to easily identify with his different life stages.
It’s perhaps a little odd I should have gotten this far in the review without discussing the art. After all, it is a graphic novel, and one with spectacularly good art. Perhaps it’s because the art so perfectly fits the story, realistic but loose, catching all the little details and illustrating characters’ emotions so well, it hardly seems necessary to comment on it specifically. Odd, but I think perhaps making art that is unobtrusive is harder than something that really calls attention to itself.
Some nudity and sex makes the book inappropriate for younger readers, but it’s not salacious in nature and shouldn’t put any older readers off. I would recommend Daytripper to any adult or mature teen-ager who is interested in a quiet but beautifully told and drawn story delving into what life means as we assume different roles as we age.
I have no words to express how proud I am after reading this wonderful comic book by those two Brazilian brothers, Moon and Ba. I am excited that those authors were able to show Brazil as it is to the world: there’s not just one way of being Brazilian, but many, many ways. The Brazilian societal core values were all present: family, friendship, hard work, religion, and fun. The readers can see the striking cultural differences between people from different states. Honestly, it’s a respite not reading this time about Brazil’s football, slums, Carnival, and crimes. Yet crimes permeate many pages here and trigger all the sorrows. Now to the point: this is a very sensitive and inspirational book. I rarely read comic books but I could not resist this one, because it is about life and death, and one will only start living a full life after understanding and accepting death. Great job!