Daytripper: wrenching existential graphic novel

Daytripper collects the full run of award-winning Brazilian comic-creating twins Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon's acclaimed graphic novel. Daytripper is the story of Bras de Oliva Domingos, the son of one of Brazil's most treasured writers. Bras aspires to write novels, too, though the closest he manages for some time is a job writing obits for a daily newspaper.

Daytripper tells Bras's life story through a series of vignettes, and at the end of each one, Bras dies, usually in some horrible, tragic fashion. And then the next installment begins, and Bras is alive again, and his terminal accident never happened, and his life proceeds.

With each iteration, Bras has the chance to come closer to doing the right thing — for himself, for his lovers and friends, for his family, for his son — and with each turn on the wheel, Bras learns something new.

This existential device works extraordinarily well, making for a story that grows progressively more moving with each chapter. Somehow, the impacts of the inevitable deaths are never diminished through repetition, but rather increase in their tragedy.

DC/Vertigo were good enough to supply us with an exclusive reprint of cartoonist Craig Thompson's (Habibi, Blankets) introduction in comic form. Click through below to read it in full.

Daytripper