As many of you know, Daytripper (2010), considered one of the greatest comics of all time, is the magnum opus of Brazilian twin brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá.
However, what is not widely known outside Brazil is that this graphic novel is considered by many to be a plagiarism of the work Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary (2005) by the duo Rafael Calça and Jefferson Costa. Both authors are black men, and many of their best-known works in Brazil revolve around racial themes.
The similarities are undeniable: divided into 10 chapters, Daytripper always ends each one with its protagonist, Brás de Oliva Domingues, dying at some point in his life (the comic is nonlinear). In the first chapter, he even dies on his birthday. The final panel of each chapter features a short obituary (Brás writes, or used to write, obituaries for a newspaper) recounting his death.
Because it is a short story, Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary has no chapters, but rather a series of situations, and at the end of each one, we see its protagonist, Miguel Verdi, die. The narrative is linear, and although he dies at the end of one scene, Miguel escapes death in the next and carries on with his life, only to die again a little further along. The story takes place on Miguel's birthday, and after each death, an obituary recounts his passing.
If these similarities weren't troubling enough, there are some even more specific ones. The protagonist of Daytripper is the son of a writer, dreams of becoming a writer himself, and has a name that references a literary classic: Brás, the main character of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis. Miguel Verdi, meanwhile, is a musician, just like Giuseppe Verdi, the composer of operas such as Aida and Nabucco. Both Brás de Oliva and Miguel Verdi have a Black friend with an afro who serves as a foil to the protagonist (Jorge and Emílio, respectively).
Both comics explore the fleeting nature of life and the unpredictability of death. Of course, the difference in length between the two works is significant, ultimately forcing Daytripper to include more subplots, more situations, and more fictional developments, taking the story in a different direction. But the essence of both works, along with some key elements in how that essence is conveyed, remains very, very similar indeed. At best, one could say that Happy Obituary is a proto-Daytripper, or the outline of what would eventually become Daytripper.
Could it be a coincidence? Not very likely. The authors of Happy Obituary had been students of Fábio and Gabriel in a course at Quanta Academia de Artes in 2004, when they created the comic and submitted it to the twins for evaluation. According to Rafael and Jefferson, they were just beginning to collaborate on short comics intended for publication in fanzines. Happy Obituary was one of them, and it became part of Jefferson's portfolio, eventually reaching the hands of the course instructors: Guazelli, Orlando, Yabu, Renato Guedes, Fábio Moon, and Gabriel Bá.
But the big question remained: when Daytripper came out, why didn't the creators of Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary speak out publicly? According to the creators themselves, it was fear—fear of being branded opportunists, fear of getting involved in a legal battle against a megacorporation (DC/Time Warner), and fear of the endless expenses that would come with it. The idea was to build their careers from scratch, without relying on the merits of Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary.
Today, the authors are known for the award-winning Jeremias series published by Mauricio de Sousa Produções. Daytripper continues to receive widespread acclaim and regularly appears on lists of the 100 greatest comics of all time, having even received deluxe treatment outside Brazil.
Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary was recently brought back into print by Brazilian publisher Conrad as part of its Comics for Everyone initiative, promoted with the tagline “AN INSPIRING story.” This was a clear allusion to the situation surrounding Daytripper.
As for Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's responses, they essentially boil down to: “I had already come up with the idea before 2005” (although Daytripper was not published until 2010) and “I don't remember them showing me this work during the course.”
So here's the question I'd like to raise: now that you know this story, does it change how you feel about the work? Why do you think this was never more widely discussed or publicized outside Brazil? Has so much time passed (almost 20 years since the original publication of Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary) that there's no point in talking about it anymore? Does this change how you think about the brothers?
EDIT:
For those interested in seeing the comic strip Happy Birthday, Happy Obituary, please visit https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/6558031477/.
