Daytripper: How Moon & Ba Are Un-cheapening Death
By jakob187 1 Comments
Recently, aztek the lost commented to me on Freeman's review of issue #6 of Daytripper that he felt I might be spoiling a massive plot point about the Daytripper series. I would say "if you don't want to know what that is, then don't look at the upcoming spoiler tag"...but I won't say that. There will be no spoiler tag. I don't feel what I'm about to say is at all a spoiler, but it is a necessity.
The lead character of Daytripper, Bras de Oliva Domingo, dies at the end of every issue.
If anyone feels that it IS a spoiler, I'm more than happy to contain it in spoiler tags, but it's difficult to speak about the stories that these books are actually talking about without bringing up the fact that its lead character meets his very untimely demise by the last page of every single book you are buying.
I haven't written my own user reviews for the first three books in the series, as I didn't really care to write reviews. I did it for three years with video games, and it was a chore. It also made me hate video games for a while, but luckily that has since changed. However, once I read the fourth issue, I had to write a review. It has since made me realize that reviewing books is something exciting for me, as it's a very different kind of reviewing.
In my user review for #4, I point out that I cried at the end of the story. This is literal, folks. Balling like a sissy, grabbed a bottle of scotch and had a couple glasses, sat on my bed and thought about my life...CRYING. It is VERY rare that something has that level of impact on me personally. Combining issue #3 and #4, it made it even more resonant for me. Here's why:
In issue #3, he's 28 and alone, and gotta say - I'm in the same boat. The outlook for the future? Not so great. Mind you, it's different than Bras' situation, but I could completely understand his feelings of loneliness. He ends up meeting a glimpse of a woman that feels comfortable, safe, and more than anything, feels like the potential of forever.
Then he dies...and that hits really hard on a very emotional and personal level for me.
The idea of Daytripper to me is that the death makes the moments of life more meaningful. In my review for issue #5, I pointed out that I felt like Bras' death felt like it was becoming more of a gimmick because I didn't feel the emotional pull the same way I did in #3 and #4. I've come to realize that I didn't NEED to feel the emotional pull of the death, as knowing that he was going to die...even at 11 years old...impacted the way I looked at these tiny moments in his life.
The knowledge of death makes the artwork in those panels, every little detail of them, spring off the pages. It's one of the few books where sitting for a few moments, staring at that panel, really taking it in...it makes a world of difference.
Hell, when I go back and look at Tony's review of the first issue, he refuses to spoil the ending to it because he didn't know where the series was going. We didn't know this was going to become an ongoing thing in the books. Now that we DO know it's an ongoing thing, I wish he WOULD'VE told us about it in that review. I've gone back and read these books at least 10 times each now (well, except #6, still haven't gotten to pick it up yet). Every single one of these issues has so much interlocking stuff, and the chronology that Fabio Moon has picked to tell this story in is just so godd*#n brilliant! I don't think I would've cared so much about issue #4 without the events of issue #3.
Therefore, I don't think it's a spoiler at all saying "Bras, the lead character of Daytripper, dies at the end of every issue". If anything, I think letting people know that information makes the books even stronger than if you try to hide that fact. Daytripper is a peek into our own mortality, a way of reminding us "Death is coming for you, make the most of it while you can, and enjoy the little things". Without Bras' death, what kind of book would we be left with? Stories of life that simply hold less impact.