Fábio MoonBesprekingen

The entire tale contains different chapters about the same character's life. But they're not continuous chapters of the same life - since the main character dies in each story at different ages and after diverging paths. So, that would mean this is a pretty dark book. And yet...and yet....it's not. Alright, it is dark...there's some murder, a variety of accidents, lots of other ill fated life, but there's also hope for the future, there's a message to make the best of the life we have, wherever it finds us. And that's something to take with you.

Um dos livros mais importantes da literatura brasileira contemporânea, Dois irmãos vem, desde seu lançamento há quinze anos, conquistando novas gerações de leitores. E foi com o mesmo entusiasmo desses leitores que Fábio Moon e Gabriel Bá embarcaram na missão de adaptar o romance de Milton Hatoum para uma graphic novel. Entre os mais premiados da última década, os irmãos quadrinistas vêm igualmente arrebatando fãs e trazendo uma verdadeira legião de leitores às HQs. Suas obras foram publicadas em diversos países, atravessando fronteiras culturais e políticas. Ao mesmo tempo que preserva a força narrativa de Hatoum, esta adaptação evidencia o talento de Bá e Moon na construção de histórias que alternam entre a tragédia, a delicadeza, a brutalidade e o humor. No traço deles, a vida dos gêmeos Yaqub e Omar ganha novos contornos épicos. A Manaus dos quadrinhos, feita de um jogo de luz e sombras, acolhe este drama que cruza gerações e, seja nos grandes planos ou nos mínimos detalhes, carrega o enredo original de energia e vitalidade. Quem conhece a obra de Hatoum vai não apenas reencontrar, mas redescobrir com outros olhos personagens marcantes como Domingas, Halim, Zana e Dália. E os novos leitores terão contato com um riquíssimo universo ficcional, um drama que, ao esmiuçar a intimidade e a rivalidade de Yaqub e Halim, lança luz nas frestas das relações familiares, do amor e da história recente do Brasil.

"I will never forget that moment, or forget the expression on Stella's face as she watched Vic hurrying away from her. Even in death I shall remember that. Her clothes were in disarray, and there was makeup smudged across her face, and her eyes-You wouldn't want to make a universe angry. I bet an angry universe would look at you with eyes like that."

In this graphic novel adaption of "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" which was nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Short Story and won the Locus Award for Best Short Story, Gaiman conjures up an eerie coming of age story that is not only about the differences between the sexes (men viewing women as foreign creatures or "aliens") but could also be read as a parable for how to treat girls (i.e. don't take advantage of them because, because after all, you wouldn't want to make the universe angry). It is also a great story that investigates (like so many stories from Gaiman have a tendency to do) childhood memory and the loss of childhood innocence through the lens of the fantastical.

The story is pretty simple. It is about a couple of British 1970s teen-aged boys, Enn and Vic, who go to a party to meet girls, only to find that the girls are very different from the boys' expectations. But the story goes deeper than that. Enn, who doesn't really know how to interact with girls (or so he thinks) encounters three "alien beings" who attempt to express their loneliness, their thirst for knowledge, imperfection, fear of death, and need to communicate their stories. His friend, Vic is a more superficial, takes off upstairs with the girl Stella (Star), and he gets more than he bargained for-as the universe finds him lacking.

Enn's last meeting is with Triolet, who pours her story/poem into his being. This story in the form of a poem changes him. Enn can recognize and access the story inherent in the music playing in the house amidst the stars and the universe. Just then, however, Vic dashes up and says they have to leave. Triolet is disappointed that she doesn’t get to finish her poem, but Vic is insistent. Enn looks up the stairs and sees the disheveled Stella, whose eyes he would never forget

Thirty years later, as Enn is telling the story, he recalls that Stella's eyes looked like an angry universe.

The boys run for a long time, until Vic stops and throws up in the gutter. He begins to sob as he tries to explain what he’s experienced. Enn says he still can’t imagine what Vic saw that night that terrified him so badly. Enn tries to remember the poem Triolet told him, but he cannot.

What is interesting about this story is the fact that both the girls and Enn seem to be travelers and in search of something. Enn seems like he searching for deeper connections and meaning and so are the girls. In contrast, Vic was only concerned with a more primal connection and well, upset a superior being in the process.

The story happens only through the course of a few hours yet encompasses eons of extrapolated human nature. How does Gaiman do it?

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, the folks who adapted this story into its graphic form, as they manage to create a strangely unique place in the everyday world that Gaiman has created. The artwork manages to highlight some of the stranger but subtle parts of the story well through its playful use of watercolors.

Highly recommended.

Interesting attempt at literary fiction, in comics. It's surprisingly a genre not that well represented in the artform, even in these modern times, with the "real mainstream". Anyhoo, it has a singular little conceit, a trope to structure the stories, which gets more grating as the story goes on. I suspect Moon and Ba found themselves regretting it at times. Still, it doesn't detract from what is a nice, engaging story about life and fate and romance and stuff like that. The art is pleasant and works well. I may be bumping up my rating a little for effort and originality.

Full colour throughout. Story of two young men, still teenagers who turn up to the wrong house party and encounter mysterious girls who seem to be from another planet. Funny.

Typical Gaiman-esque allegory

3.5 out of 5 stars
This was a weird story. Enn and his friend go to a party and Enn has a lot of random conversations with pretty girls and it never raises a single red flag in his brain that the things they are saying make absolutely no sense.

😭

Like all Hellboy, this was great.

A beautifully unsettling book. It reminds me of some of Ray Bradbury's short stories.

1771

Graphic Novel Book Club, Book #1

I didn't know anything about this graphic novel when I picked it up at all. I went into it only knowing there would be a series of obituaries in it. What I fell into was a n amazing twisting and turning story about little deaths, about choices and consequences, about lives that could have happened and death's that could have stopped them. I was confused and chilled and baffled and intrigued the whole through, torn entirely on whether I was even engaged and enjoying it.

Until I reached the last two issues and in the middle of them realized I was reading with rapt attention and goosebumps through them. It's an exquisite ending for a rollercoaster read. I would definitely recommend it to those who love graphic novels, epistolary writing, and navel gazing about the soul, life, death, love, betrayal, everything.

Greatread!

Very introspective and real. It doesn't get out of my mind.

Neil Gaiman, Fábio Moon, and Gabriel Bá’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties adapts Gaiman’s 2006 short story about Enn and Vic, who go to a party and discover that the girls in attendance are entirely otherworldly. The story follows Enn, who envy’s Vic’s experience with women, but who gradually learns that the exchange students are from different universes. Wain’s Wain is from an alien race sent to learn about Earth, but was imperfectly formed. Another girl claims to have visited the Sun and the bottom of the sea. Finally, Triolet tells Enn of a dying civilization’s creation of a poem to keep the memory of their world alive forever. Meanwhile, Vic spends time with Stella, but his experience goes rather differently than that of Enn. Gaiman’s text features rich metaphors and beautiful images that Moon and Bá bring to vivid life with their watercolor art. A great addition to any Gaiman fan’s collection and a stunning graphic novel. John Cameron Mitchell later adapted Gaiman’s story for film in 2017.½

On days when my anxiety rears its head and its occasional nudges turn into a fully charged assault, I think—if I died crossing this road this second with a bag of groceries in my hand, guilt in my heart of somehow not being polite enough to the veggie vendor, and placating thoughts of next-time-apologies in a corner of my head—what would my obituary say? I proceed to letter it by myself and five minutes after that, for that's how long it takes to develop a thought-out obituary, I move on with my life. Daytripper is just that, but art. How best to talk about life if not through deaths that could have been the end, but weren't? And sometimes we die to prove that we lived.

Interessante para fãs dos irmãos, mas sem um enredo tão sublime como outros livros deles. Tem o toque único, sensível, urbano, hodierno, mas nada muito profundo desde meu ponto de vista...

Segue o estilo de Fábio Moon e Gabriel Bá (já li Daytripper). Achei interessante, mas a mim pessoalmente me envolve demasiadamente histórias com este cunho. Insisto, é muito bom, mas eu sinto uma forte aflição junto com os personagens. Isso é graças ao ótimo estilo dos desenhistas, e o enredo muito bom.

Muito bom. Bem elaborado. Sensível e completo. Bom retrato de uma realidade claramente inspirada em diversas realidades, com um toque de profundidade bem trabalhado.

Vic and Enn are two friends looking for Vic's friend's party. They both attend an all-boys school in South London, England; as a result, they are obsessed with picking up girls at parties. Vic has consistent luck with this, while Enn is quiet and doesn't approach girls at parties as much. Vic and Enn find the party, but it turns out to be the wrong one - oops! This party has a lot of tourists from very different places.

Like so many Gaiman stories, this is going to take up space in my head for waaaay longer than it took to read this graphic novel. What an interesting twist on such a mundane start of “two 15-year-old boys go to a party and try to get some.” What a beautiful, strange mindfuck of a story.

I kind of forgot that this entire story centers on death and dying. Hits a bit different in the time of COVID.

Could've been good. It's about gangs of cigarette girls feuding over territory and laying waste to the city. The author used to be a cigarette girl, and the artist is really good at atmosphere and attitude and mayhem. That's pretty much all there is though, and except for a very few good jokes, the writing is really thin and the plot is arbitrary -- I'm damned if I can figure out why this one character blew herself up in the big battle, except just to give the others an excuse for some sentimental revenge talk. Maybe you have to be a smoker to understand.

I like this line from the first "chapter": "Either I don't have the time, or I just don't have the heart."

I'm a little confused with the format. 1st chapter is 32. 2nd chapter is 23. We shall see what the next chapter is. wtf he died... again. I thought he died in the first chapter and we were going to work backwards through his life but nope he died at the end of 23 also. so confused.

Next chapter is 28 and I guess it's his life if he didn't die at 23. So "chapters" are the MC's age. I've researched and he dies at the end of each chapter.

I'm tapping out. Just not what I am looking for.

Story 1. Writer of obituaries dies in random act of violence.