
Thanks to the repetitive nature of Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon's
Daytripper, each issue ending with the death of the main character Brás de Oliva Domingo (I hope that isn't a spoiler to anyone by now,) there's not a lot of suspense to the story. Brás is going to die; it's just a question of how Bá and Moon are going to pull that particular trigger this time around. The opening of
Daytripper #6 feels like they've accepted that everyone already knows how this is going to end because they telegraph the ending; a truck driver sits at a late night diner after driving for two days straight. This isn't a full stop but a quick rest for good food and hard drink, his "little fix" to keep him awake. Walking out, he brags that God is his co-pilot and "With him by my side, nothing bad can happen to me inside my ride." The truck driver is the ending of the story but he isn't the story.
A passenger plane from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, Brazil crashes on landing, leaving no survivors. The obituary writer for the local newspaper, Brás has to write tributes to everyone on the plane, not for the dead, his editor tells him, but for the survivors. "Write about their sons, daughters and friends. They're dead. Period. Help these people accept it and let them move on." Brás digs through their lives, talking to their loved ones and he gives the sons, daughters and friends the closure they need; he comforts them through this obituaries. While he gives them what they need, he's empty because he thinks his friend Jorge may have been on that flight. Even after all the dead are identified and none as Jorge, Brás can't track down his friend. One day, Jorge calls; he wasn't on the plane but the whole thing shook him up. After some soul searching, he's calling to tell Brás that he can't go back to his life; he's never coming back. "Do something with your life" are the last words Jorge tells Brás before hanging up. But there's that truck driver out there, with his copilot and his "little fix." And we all know how the issues of
Daytripper end, don't we?
Daytripper #6 takes the basic premise that Bá and Moon have set up and twists it around a bit. They end up in the same place as each issue has but they have to; that's part of the rules that they've set up for themselves in
Daytripper. As the second half of their 10 issue miniseries begins though, they send a message to Brás through Jorge. For five issues, Brás has gone through his life and just as he's on the verge of discovery or acceptance, he gets shot, electrocuted or drowned. He never gets to the point where he learns something and grows. He gets to the precipice but never gets to peer over it. In this issue, Jorge almost ends up being in Brás's role. Jorge is the one, through some strange twist of fate, who's put in mortal danger but he doesn't die. He's not killed and that changes his life. "Life is too short, man... I can't go back to that life." Those are the words that we've wanted to hear Brás say but he never gets that far in his journey so he has to have them said to him. He's got to hear someone else have the epiphany that he should have had five issues ago.
Jorge also shows us that death can be avoided in Bá and Moon's story. There can be life; we got hints of that an issue or two ago with the story of the birth of Brás' child and now we get it again here with Jorge. Maybe Bá and Moon are moving the story toward a point where life will win out; where, if nothing else, Brás will be able to die of old age, surrounded by family and loved ones after a good long and well-lived life. Maybe he has to go through all of these deaths to discover what life is. Jorge has found that out and maybe he'll be able to shepherd Brás towards that knowledge as well somewhere during the remainder of this series..
Brás obituary this issue reads "Some might say success was not in Brás de Oliva Domingo's destiny, but they might also say God works in mysterious ways." Is there much of a difference between a trucker's co-pilot and a worker of mysterious ways?
Daytripper is about death, mortality, lessons of living for the day and reminders that each day may well be our last. We all can't be Jorge, narrowly avoiding death thanks to the whims of an airline schedule but what if we're Brás? What if there are lessons that no matter how we hear them, we just can't or won't accept?
Daytripper #6"Chapter Six: 33"
Written & Drawn by: Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Sean Konot