Daytripper

Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá

This lovely graphic novel is a meditation on life and mortality — how things change and stay the same, how a life kind of rhymes with itself, and how there’s almost always hope.

The story follows the life of Bras de Olivias Dominguez. Each chapter invites us into a different stage in Bras’ life in Brazil, and each ends in the same way: with his death and an obituary.

We see Bras as a newspaper writer and wannabe novelist, at a festival, on the day he meets his wife, and on the day he loses his father. At the start of every chapter, his life resets in a feat of magical realism that does just what it’s meant to do: It poignantly imaginatively contrasts with realism.

These vivid vignettes add up to a life that we experience out of order. They’re an invitation to think about what life might be like if stopped at different stages and ages — and then we see it go on. Other characters evolve or disappear altogether, just as real people crash into and drift out of our lives.

Because the events of Bras’ life travel back and forth in time, we sometimes see the consequences before the action. That’s put to good effect in telling the story of Bras’ father. In the first chapter, Bras is 32, and we get a sense that his father — a world-famous Brazilian writer — casts a long shadow on Bras’ life. As the story continues, we see the son as a younger man and a child, and we come to understand why.

Just as the magical realism does its job, so does the book’s art. A lush, colorful merging of watercolor with pen and ink, the panels are simultaneously bold and dreamy with color palettes that shift to mirror the story they’re telling.

Daytripper were originally published as 10 discrete comic books. Taken together, they’re an excellent example of the storytelling power of the graphic novel. And this slender story about dying over and over is a rich exploration of life.

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