Daytripper

As a young man, Brás works as an obituary writer for a newspaper. He stays at this job for years as he tries to figure out his first novel. Brás points out the irony of his occupation early on: His entire life revolves around writing about the deaths of others. At the end of most chapters where Brás dies, there is a small obituary posted detailing his death and what he has left behind. These are differentiated from the rest of the text with a typeface-like font, and they vary in length depending on his life stage.

The first panels of the comic involve the obituaries Brás has written for others. Their lives are mentioned in passing at other points in the book as well. Obituaries are used throughout the text as a means of expressing the life someone has chosen to lead, and what they have left behind. Obituaries as a form also help Brás put his own life into perspective, particularly after he writes dozens in the wake of the plane explosion. By distilling a person’s life down to its essence, the reader is left with a sense of what mattered to them, what they valued, and what defined the most significant moments of their lives.