Daytripper

Starred review from January 10, 2011
A stunning, moving story about one man's life and all the possibilities to be realized or lost along the way. Brothers Bá and Moon take readers through the life of a man named Brás de Oliva Domingos, selecting a series of individual events of great significance to Brás, showing each as if it could be the day Brás dies, and in so doing creating an examination of family, friendship, love, art, life, and death that urges the reader to turn the same careful inspection on their own life. Central is the relationship between Brás, who is first seen as a disgruntled writer stuck in a job writing obituaries, and his father, Benedito de Oliva Domingos, a famous author. Although each section can be years apart, themes all beautifully tie in throughout the work; characters develop as more is learned about them as the story jumps back and forth in time; and moments of Brás' life take on entirely new meanings as events from his possible pasts or futures cast them into new lights. Moon and Bá's artwork is as impressive as their writing, and aided by colorist Dave Stewart the artists/writers render gorgeous cities and landscapes from Brazil across several decades, adding in touches of the surreal when the story calls for it. This is an intense work that promises to bring the reader along on a personal and rewarding journey.

Starred review from September 15, 2011

Any day in your life, you could die. Bras de Oliva Domingos writes obituaries for a Brazilian paper but dreams of writing novels like his famous father and seizing love and life as his friend Jorge urges. We glimpse nine episodes in Bras's life: first kiss, glimpse of true love, son's birth, and more--and at the end of each episode comes "what if?" What if Bras dies that day? Readers are presented with nine obituaries for Bras at different ages, i.e., nine endings to his story. The writing soars in evoking the little moments and small meanings of life, as well as in elegies penned after it ends. A warm, nostalgic realism conjuring the beauty and perfection of little moments, the art keeps pace, too. VERDICT From this work's seemingly morbid premise to its memory-lit visuals, Moon and Ba have crafted a life worth living vicariously in all its possibilities and missed chances, extended or cut short. The beautiful, seemingly artless writing reveals the authors as in command of their novelistic subject. Winner of a 2011 Eisner and a splendid find for book discussion groups and fans of literary graphic novels; with occasional nudity and sexual episodes.--M.C.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2011
The Eisner Awardwinning Brazilian twins B and Moon should be lauded, first of all, for the impressive scope of their 10-issue miniseries collected here. The chapters jump around in chronology, each capturing a decisive moment in the life of Brs de Oliva Domingos, who is at times a novice obituary writer and a famous novelist, an eager son and an absent father, a selfish lover and a selfless friend. We see how his life takes shape through the reverberations of both quiet, lingering moments and epic shifts of unmeasurable joy and tragedy, and when each chapter ends with a different version of his death, the question looms: What would your life mean if it ended today? The brothers artwork (mostly done by Moon) sets the stylishly shaggy figures in detailed Brazilian cityscapes, pastoral countryside scenes, and even a casually surreal dream sequence or two, shaping the carefully measured and dynamic humanism of the story into a package that displays a level of ruminative (but never navel-gazing) introspection not often found in mainstream comics. A particularly effective look at the different steps life and death take as they dance together, and how each little minideath called change can come to confine, refine, and define a life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)