Daytripper 8 in July in London and San Diego!

We were not born to be alone. Well, I have a twin brother, so I really take that seriously from very early in my life. The more people we can count on, the better our lives can be.

We're drawing the last two issues of the series, our journey is almost over. The end is near and it's hard to let go. Also, it's very liberating.

On the eighth issue of Daytripper, as readers, we already know Brás, we already trust him. We count on him to lead the way on another story. He already has a place in our lives, that's for sure.

Daytripper #8 comes out in July, on a week we'll be away from home, in London, during a big Festival. Soon after that, we're going to San Diego. Comics have been taking us a lot of different places and, sometimes, away from the people we love and care about.

Well, this is a very strong story and the cover adds even more intensity to it.

See you in 2 months in London, San Diego, and everywhere else.



Written by GABRIEL BÁ & FÁBIO MOON
Art by GABRIEL BÁ & FÁBIO MOON
Cover by GABRIEL BÁ
Brás is constantly on the road, but that doesn't stop a caring husband and loving father from having a big role in his family's daily life. Do they miss him? Can they manage well enough while he's away? And how large a hole would he leave if he weren't there anymore?

CASANOVA is BACK!!

New covers!
32 pages comics!
Re-colored by Cris Peter!
Re-lettered by Dustin Harbin!

Third arc ON THE MAKING!
At ICON!

Daytripper 5!

We're on full speed here, driven by all the good words and good numbers of our little tale. The story is only midway through for you, but it's reaching the end for us. The next two months will bring the last chapters of the story to life, and I'm dying to get there.

Meanwhile, Daytripper #5 is on the stands and it's the most beautiful of all so far. You don't wanna miss this one.



Written by FÁBIO MOON and GABRIEL BÁ; Art by GABRIEL BÁ and FÁBIO MOON; Cover by GABRIEL BÁ
At 11 years old, Brás's world was only as big as his house. But that changed when his family headed to his grandparents' countryside ranch. And there – at a place where the sun was stronger and the stars shone brighter – Brás would suddenly see everything under a new light!

Image of love

I read a lot of comics when I was a kid, mostly super-heroes, and all of them had a big influence on me when I decided to work with comicbooks. Certainly books like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen and Moonshadow had a huge impact over me, even if I wasn't old enough to really understand it. I was just enjoying it and being dragged inside that world.

As the 80's were coming to it's closure, I began to pay attention to the creators behind the comics I was reading, not only the characters and the stories. Claremont and Byrne on the X-Men, Jim Aparo on Batman, John Romita Jr., Walter Simonson, Peter David, George Perez. I noticed something was changing, I just had no idea how big this change would be. It was only on the early 90's that seven of these "names" I had been starting to follow took me by surprised and changed the world of comics forever. They were Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino and Whilce Portacio. Yes, I'm talking about Image.

I know we really repeat over and over how much the story is important to us on comicbooks, more important than the art, but we were 16 and Image Comics was the best thing on Earth for us back then. It was beautiful, it was fun, it was new (even if they used old formulas). Wildcats, Savage Dragon, Spawn. The Maxx, Gen 13, Pitt. At that time, all we wanted to do was work at Image Comics.

I have done my share of portfolio reviews and artwork submission here in Brazil and like many others in the 90's, I did walk the path of the "Jim Lee's mimics". Stiff and unnatural, (luckily) it didn't work out for me.

Back in 1996, on my first trip to California, with a handful of deskjet prints of color samples, I tried to visit Wildstorm and Extreme Studios. Found the post office in La Jolla and got stood up on my hotel in San Diego, but I did go to Extreme studios and showed my pages there. I was supposed to send more samples, but I never did.

In 97, everything changed for us when we went to our first San Diego Comic Con and we discovered a whole universe of comics we had never heard of, never imagined that existed. Image was there, all the creators were there (in person!), but even if we have been reading their books for years, we suddenly identified ourselves more with independent and alternative creators. Image was too big for us, too mainstream and there was too many deliciously unknown stuff for us to discover.

Our road on the comicbook world turned to a new and unknown direction with Roland: Days of Wrath and the all new connections we made during the following years, hanging with creators like Jeff Smith, Terry Moore, Jill Thompson and talking to editors like Diana Schutz and Bob Schreck. Every new book we published in Brazil, we took the artwork to portfolio reviews in San Diego year after year and showed the stories to Diana. We hanged out mostly on the Small Press area of the convention, where Shane had his Terra Major table, and we walked the floor following the creators we admired, showing pages to editors and buying new comics by the hands of strange authors.

In 2004 we did a self-published comic called Rock'n'Roll (with Bruno D'Angelo and Kako), a silent comic that we could sell at the convention. We were fed up of only showing pages on portfolio reviews. In 2004, we also got our first story published in the US, URSULA, by Ait/Planet Lar, a publisher we had discovered the year before and that had published a book called Last of the Independents, by Matt Fraction and Kieron Dwyer. It was at the AiT booth in San Diego that we also met a tiny little shy girl called Becky Cloonan. And it was with AiT that we would make our first really commercial comic, Smoke and Guns, written by Kirsten Baldock, with high hopes that it would be turned into a movie.

Smoke and Guns didn't turn into a movie, but it called the attention of a guy called Eric Stephenson, who was an editor at... Image Comics. He saw some pages of it online and looked for what Fábio had done before. He found Rock'n'Roll and liked it. And just like that, he contacted us.

He wanted to publish Rock'n'Roll at Image and he had this project pitched by a writer called Matt Fraction that he thought Fábio's artwork fitted the bill. It was called Casanova.

Like a work of magic (and more than ten years later), we were where we wanted to be in the first place. It was only then that we discovered that Image had changed a lot from the last time we checked. It was no longer Wildcats, Youngblood, Cyberforce, Spawn and Witchblade all over the place, but now it was more like a "big independent publisher", full of new creator-owned projects like Powers, Invincible, Pirates of Coney Island, Walking Dead and anthologies like Flight, so we felt right at home.

All at once, our efforts started to pay off and everything began to happen in our freshly started careers. Image published Rock'n'Roll and Casanova and we did a little story for an anthology called 24seven, also published by them, organized by Ivan Brandon. We ended up doing another story for the second volume of 24seven on the next year (nominated for an Eisner of best anthology).
As we were publishing new and interesting comics, we shared tables on the Image booth for 3 years in a row, an important move to look the audience in the eye and win them over with our charming accent. Located on a tremendous spot and sharing the space with incredible creators, we took the most of this experience selling all our comics (even the ones we had with other publishers), including our self-published "5", done with Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos, that ended up winning an Eisner Award in 2008. Selling it at that table during the convention was crucial to it's success.

For the past three years, everything has changed for me. If it wasn't for Eric Stephenson's first contact, there would be no Casanova. If that would be the case, there'd be no Umbrella Academy, because that comic really made Scott Allie and Gerard Way invite me to the series. We met incredible people over these years. Eric Stephenson, Joe Keating, Drew Gill, Ivan Brandon, Andy MacDonald, Paul Azaceta, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Rick Spears, Jason Pearson and Robert Kirkman. I'm sure there's a whole lot more.

We have worked with a lot of different publishers, small and big, in Brazil and in the U.S., on very different projects. No one is perfect, there's no easy way to do this thing we do. All you need is to really love what you're doing and that's what Image represented for me from the beginning: love for comicbooks.

I don't know about you, but Image Comics really changed my life.

Hulk Smash!

Soon, in a comic book store near you.

Witch and Wizard cover 2

I'm doing the covers for this Witch and Wizard mini-series at IDW. You can find out more about this at their June solicitation list.

It's good to stretch other muscles from time to time.

Below, a detail of the inking, the initial approved sketch, the inked version and the final cover.

Flower

What about you?

Going up or down?

Daytripper 4 ever.

Moon and Bá have crafted a frighteningly human story, winding together the moments that define who we are to weave a tapestry of life and death. Lyrical, poetic, and haunting, Daytripper is an experience that will resonate with you long after you have put the book down.
-- Becky Cloonan (5, PIXU, DEMO)



Daytripper 4 is out now.

Don't miss it.

a note in the mail

Along with the first issue of the new DEMO, we just got a note from Becky in the mail.


Do you still go to the mail to send your friends stuff? Doesn't it feel great when you get something in the mail from a friend.

In a profession where we work mostly by ourselves, it's good to have friends who reach out. We should all do it.

Lets make comics, and share with our friends.

p.s: Daytripper #4 comes out today. Go grab your copy before your store runs out of copies.

God Save the Queen - Brazilian comics in the UK

We had our share of traveling (nowadays mostly business trips) and we always come back home with the certainty that we will never leave Brazil. Not that there's something wrong with other places and Brazil is certainly not perfect, but it's our home. And we're glad to notice that for the foreign eyes turning their attentions to our home, even with all the flaws and things we're not happy about, Brazil has never looked so good.

The Southbank Centre in London, UK, will be holding Festival Brazil, a celebration of the country's cultural heritage, including music, visual arts, dance, literature, debates and food. It will begin in June 19th and it will go until September 5th. Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Tom Zé, Sócrates, Milton Hatoum and lots of other artists on one big event. Here's the promotional video, only a little taste of all the diverse talents that will be part of the festival.



And if Brazil is on a good phase, the same can be said about comics, getting a lot of attention and recognition all around the world, proving itself to be more than just pretty pictures, but one of the most fresh and inovative forms of art and storytelling of our times. With that in mind, among the literay attractions of the festival, there's going to be a panel with Fábio and me on July 5th at 7pm, where we'll talk about comics in general, our work and what Brazil has to do with all of that.

You can get all the information about Festival Brazil on their website. You can learn more about our panel and also book your ticket for one of the 250 seats here.

On our most recent work, Daytripper, we are telling a story different from all the others we have told before. We are showing this Brazil that no other comic has ever shown. Let's all meet up in London and talk about how we can always be surprised by people, what they do, the places we know and the ones we are yet to discover.

Spiderman

Brás

Find out more about Daytripper here.

Daytripper 6 solicitation

Daytripper 6 (of 10)

Written by GABRIEL BÁ & FÁBIO MOON
Art by GABRIEL BÁ & FÁBIO MOON
Cover by GABRIEL BÁ
When life takes us by surprise and makes everyone want to close their eyes, Brás finally gains something he’s been waiting his entire life to find. But he would trade it all to know what happened in Rio.


Vertigo, 32 pg, color, US $2.99 - mature readers
On sale MAY 12

Our podcast on the day Daytripper #3 hits

Today, Daytripper #3 hits the stands. We love this issue and now it's on the readers hands. It's on your hands.

That podcast on the previous post, on Alter Ego Comic Cast? Here the updated link with the actual talk. Fun stuff

Finally, also this week I contributed to a 4 page story inside DMZ #50. I liked the story and the idea behind it, and I'm very happy about the way it came out on paper. Also, I now have my name on a comic along with Jim Lee, Dave Gibbons and Eduardo Risso. Wow.

Strange fact: the artwork from Daytripper #3 was finished about one year earlier than the artwork for DMZ.

Alter Ego on the 10th

This wednesday, we'll be on the Alter Ego Comic Cast talking about our past and present work, focusing maybe on Daytripper since it's the same day issue 3 hits the stands. We talked to the Alter Ego folks last thursday, it was a night of heavy raining here in São Paulo, and just until half hour prior to recording the podcast, we had no internet at the studio and we kept wondering if we should go home and do it there. Little did we know that at home, because of the rain, the entire neighborhood was powerless, enjoying a blackout. The internet came back as we were packing to leave the studio, so everything worked out fine.

Beach

Childhood and the trip of growing up

Since we've done URSULA back in 2000 (wow! 10 years ago), we haven't really come back to the realms of children and childhood on our stories. There's a certain way of looking at life and explaining the world that sometimes is easier when you're looking at it through the eyes of a child.

Well, we certainly dug deep on our fifth chapter of Daytripper, just solicited, and I couldn't be prouder.

I like the power comics have to turn ourselves back into children at the same time they make the adults think harder about life. Very few things in life have this range.

I hope you are all enjoying our series. This is all I've ever wanted to do on a comicbook and we still have a lot to tell.

Daytripper 5 (of 10)

Written by FÁBIO MOON and GABRIEL BÁ; Art by GABRIEL BÁ and FÁBIO MOON; Cover by GABRIEL BÁ
At 11 years old, Brás's world was only as big as his house. But that changed when his family headed to his grandparents' countryside ranch. And there – at a place where the sun was stronger and the stars shone brighter – Brás would suddenly see everything under a new light!

Vertigo - 32pg. - Color - $2.99 US - Mature Readers
On Sale April 14, 2010

Do you remember that trip?

The second issue of Daytripper comes out today. This chapter was one of the first ones we knew we wanted to tell (the first promotional image of the book refers to this part of the story), and one of the hardest to write. It answers some questions and poses others.

Brás is going places, making a magical trip across the country.

And we're going along for the ride.

We wouldn't want to miss it.

We certainly wouldn't want to miss her.


Daytripper 2
Written by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
Art by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá
Cover by Gabriel Bá

The first girl of 2010

I know, I signed the wrong date. It happens.
Happy 2010.