Books that make you really think, feel and wonder at the same time are a rarity. Something that I read today that falls in this light is the graphic comic novel “Daytripper”, written and drawn by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. Inks and watercolours are a challenging medium however; this novel shows the hardness and subtlety of inks effortlessly mastered. The colouring was amazingly done by Dave Stewart, lots of tonal gradients and subtle colours flowing into another.

The novel is a beautifully written tale about Bras de Olivia Domingos, an aspiring writer working at a newspaper writing obituaries. The tale is told in ten chapters and each chapter presents a moment in time. It does not occur chronologically, it moves forwards or backwards from youth to old age, giving it another dynamic to time. Each moment represents a turning point in his life and ends with his death and an obituary.

Death in this novel occurs at a regular basis, instead of being fearful or shocked when it occurs, it is accepted and it teaches us to celebrate humanity. The addition of death punctuates the truth in every moment making it impactful. A moment can be an entire lifetime and so take in every moment of our lives which we tend to forget because we are too busy.

This is not your conventional super hero comic however, there is some supernatural element where death is reoccurring and how moments of Bras life are fused with dreams giving it a sense of immortality, in dreams anything is possible and this can be translated in real life. This is a powerful graphic novel which will speak to people from different walks of life. I highly recommend Daytripper.

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