Best comics of 2010: No. 2 (tie): daytripper

This was a surprise.
Daytripper is the life of a writer, one Bras de Oliva Domingos. Told in pivotal moments and the events leading up to them, he dies at the end of every issue. Each death is a death of a part of him, though all are presented as literal deaths.

 This is eloquent, tender, raw and brutally honest. Daytripper avoids being saccharine or cynical.  The book's creative team, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, are doing the con circuit starting this year in Peru! Gabriel is the artist on the new Marvel book Casanova, written by Matt Fraction.

Moon's and Ba's art (they work in tandem on writing and illustration)has that slight distortion that reminds me of both Paul Pope and Ryan Kelly. Its fascinating, having qualities of simplicity and complexity simultaneously.
And the writing - well, the writing just pulses.

It's a book about being there for your own life, even when that means accepting your failures without ennobling them.
It's a book of wonder, not flinching from any part of the human condition.
And it's set in contemporary Brazil.

Sadly, as well received as the book was critically, it didn't translate into sales. Following issue #1, Daytripper's sales were consistently below the 10,000 copy mark, according to monthly reports at The Beat. I am hopeful that sales of the TPB, due out next month, will eclipse that.
We've speculated here in the past that the "floppy", the conventional comic book periodical, may be little more than a loss leader for TPBs in today's comic market. Based on some of the figures Colleen Doran has reported on her blog (and if you're not reading Colleen's blog, go do so right now- it's linked on this one and I'll still be here when you're done), I've come to question that blanket supposition lately.I'm not convinced that TPBs actually sell better, despite having presumably longer shelf life and a more diverse marketing and distribution platform.
But when Vertigo, a branch of DC Comics, can't move 10,000 units of so eloquent a book as Daytripper, we have a problem.
Next: Best of 2010, No. 2, part 2: light the lights!

Best comics of 2010: No. 13: DV8: Gods and Monsters

Next up on our hit parade is Brian Wood's miniseries of his creation DV8.
A teen superhero team like GEN 13, DV8's distinguishing factor is that they are inherently selfish.
I enjoyed Wood's writing on the Oni Press series LOCAL (with art by former classmate Ryan Kelly) a great deal, and thought to give this a chance based solely on that.

What intrigued me about the DV8 miniseries was not the selfish aspect of the characters (I mean really- selfish teenagers- how cliche' is that?) but the circumstances of the story.

The characters are stranded amid two pre-technological cultures, and are choosing up sides in the wars of those cultures, and debating whether they should have any involvement whatever.

Action, philosophy and snark of the best kind.
While the sniping between characters got a mite tedious around issue three, overall this posed some interesting possibilities- sort of a Rising Stars meets Lord of the Flies scenario. Questions of how powerful people still coming to terms with themselves respond to the potential influence they can have on society, or societies, are challenging.
But this is not some philosophical diatribe, no, my friends. This is war, aided and abetted by very powerful and not-quite mature beings.
Serious superhero slugfest, teen angst, and some very aggressive locals.

Cool.
Tomorrow: Number 12.