Old man, take a look at my life...-- a review of Daytripper #4
| Old man, take a look at my life...-- a review of Daytripper #4 |
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"After years spent pursuing the wrong love and the not-quite-right job, Brás de Oliva Domingos had finally gotten it together."
At age 41, this is the life that Brás was meant to live. No longer working as an obituary writer in a local paper or following his friends or lovers on some youth-necessitated trip of discovery, Brás is going to be a father. Rushing his wife to the hospital as her contractions begin, Brás misses a very important call from his mother, a call telling him that something had happened to his father. Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon's Daytripper #4 takes Brás to a point where we haven't seen him yet, to the point where Brás is a family man. We've caught glimpses of Brás' family in his younger days, in the days were he didn't know how to deal with or accept his father, in the days where he was possibly looking for a love to make a home with. Issue #4 takes us beyond those days to an older, more mature Brás as he himself is about to become a father. With an older Brás, the tone of this issue becomes something different than the previous issues have been even as by now we've figured out the structure of a Daytripper issue; it's the events of Brás' life at different points, as he learns about life and love only to have something tragic happen just as he's about to accept and embrace his world and the people around him. This has been a young man's story so far, as a man searches for a perfect love. But in this issue, he's finally found it with a wife and a son. He's finally moved beyond the self-involved stage he was at in the first couple of issues and is ready to become a family man, just like his own father. He had gotten it together. And, as in each issue before it, Brás' happiness comes too late. In four issues, Bá and Moon have shown us moments of Brás' life, moments that can't have possibly happened after the first issue and the tragic ending there; moments that couldn't have happened after the second, the third or now the fourth issue. With each issue, they close Brás' story but, sure enough, they're Báck one month later with a new moment to show us, a new event in Brás life that reveals to us the man he is and the man he can be. Here in issue #4, we see Brás as almost a father and as a son, experiencing all the emotions, joys and losses of life and death simultaneously; even as his son is being born, he has to bury his father. Moon's artwork is near perfect as he reveals so much of story just through simple body language. Brás spends so much of this issue looking to his right or his left that when Moon draws him looking straight ahead, it's startling. Flipping through Daytripper #4 and watching where Brás is looking, it's like his life is happening to the side of him, in the corners or even behind him. His life is rarely in front of him or he's rarely looking at his own life head on. It's a moment like the birth of his son that finally makes him look at what is in front of him. It's then when he finally faces up to his life and responsibilities. But it doesn't last long. Even on the last page of the story, Brás is looking off to the side again, trying to catch a glimpse of some hidden object or person and ignoring what's right in front of him. Where does Brás' life go from here? Another event, another life and another tragic ending most likely. Daytripper #4
"Chapter Four: 41"
Written and Drawn by: Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Sean Konot
"Chapter Four: 41"
Written and Drawn by: Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Sean Konot
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