daytripper

I recently went on a multi-day online spending spree and a week or two ago got a couple boxes of trades in the mail. Ok, it was probably ten or eleven books, but they did come in multiple boxes, so I'm not exaggerating all that much. Most were highly discounted, and titles that I didn't want to miss at a really good price, but I also ordered daytripper because it was a title I had heard good things about and really wanted to read. Based on the creators I was pretty sure I would like it, and I wasn't disappointed at all.

daytripper is written and drawn by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba. It is about a man and his life and his relationships. It's about being a writer, it's about being in your father's shadow, it's about being your mother's little miracle. It's about experience and dreams and family and friends. It's about mortality and what we leave behind. In the story, Every chapter covers a different important event in the life of our protagonist Bras de Olivia Domingos. The chapters are not exactly in chronological order, and every one of them ends in his death and subsequent obituary.

This was a very moving book. The art is beautiful, and it is populated with realistic people and realistic events. Despite having the main character repeatedly die and seemingly keep right on living, this is not played off as fantasy. There are dream elements in this, but conveying the dream is less of the point than conveying the reality.

To me, the art and the setting for this story are so intimately done, that despite it being a pretty exotic locale for me (Brazil), it comes across as beautiful, but very realistically portrayed. It's the protagonists home. The locations are what they are because that is where he lived, that is where he traveled to.

Excellent book. It has a very literary feel to it. It seems like it is another good example of comics that really elevate the medium. It feels like a foreign film to me. What you see is universal, and makes you think, but it is in a way that doesn't skew so much to the mainstream, doesn't deliver what you are expecting.