day trip NY driver

I drive all the time in Brazil, but I only drove two times in NYC, back in 1999

There’s a tab open on my laptop browser pointing me to the IMDB information of a movie called Home Invaders. It came out in 2001, according to the website. I haven’t seen it, nor have I read the script, and I only have a vague idea of what is was about. Still, for the past two or three months, I kept that tab open and returned to it from time to time when I would occasionally click on the available links and investigate what became of the people involved in making the film: the writer/director, the main actors, the crew. I do that sometimes, check what people who worked on a movie did before or after, and think about other artists’ career paths, and what doors working on a certain project might have open, and what are the similarities between the projects someone chose to be part of that might indicate that person’s tastes or styles, and I do that also with comic book creators, and writers, and musicians. I look at art and try to imagine the life of the people who made that art, and what led them there. I did that with Andor, researching the cast’s past and future projects, as well as the crew’s; I enjoyed Absolute Batman and went to check out East of West to know more of Nick Dragotta’s work;

But why would I do that with that particular movie?

Because, for one day, I worked on that movie.

I know, I know, this rolls of 16mm film are SO poorly conserved. I haven’t opened the closet they were on in more than ten years, at least.

Back in 1999, I did a summer at NYU studying film. I learned about the basics of film making, from lighting to shooting to editing and everything in-between, writing short movies and acting on the other students’ shorts. At NYU, I met a bunch of people from inside and outside of the class I was into, and I ended up working for the rest of summer on two feature productions. A guy named Amos stopped by my class before the end of our term and asked for people interested in helping out on a movie. Interns, basically, although the term they used was production assistants (PAs), and some of the students (myself included) answered that call.

I only worked in the movie for one day because I decided to work on another movie at that time, doing storyboards and some production design (tasks that actually benefited from my artistic background), but I remember that one day because, for starters, I had to drive the equipment truck to the location, leaving from Washington Square and driving all the way up to Harlem. At twenty three, I had a lot of experience driving in Brazil, specially stick shift, so my main concern was not getting lost inside of Manhattan in a time where you had to use physical paper maps to know your way around. A month earlier, at the film class, I had already driven a car for one of the other student’s short films, but that was on a closed block, going back and forth twenty meters over and over. A month later, I would drive a u-Haul truck full of comics and a Papier-mâché statue of Charlemagne down from Santa Barbara to San Diego for our debut having a table at SDCC to sell the first issue of ROLAND, Days of Wrath, our first published comic in the US.

As a PA that day in Harlem, I mainly worked on the grip department, helping put up scaffoldings and hang lights outside of windows of the second floor apartment they were using as one of the character’s home. One coincidence: the actress of the movie on set that day, who played the main character’s love interest, was Brazilian.

As that day went by, I realized being a PA wasn’t the best use of my time in NYC (working on the other movie was the right choice). I decided I wasn’t going to volunteer to work on the movie any other day and managed to dodge waiting until the end of the shoot to drive the truck back by remembering one VERY important detail I had not thought of before because I had been in NY for the last couple of months taking the subway everywhere: my driving license had expired.

While robots dreamed of electric sheep, he worked

Paul Pope self portrait, pencil and sumi ink, 2024

I wish I was at the opening of the Paul Pope’s Pulp Hope exhibition at the Philippe Laubane Gallery. If there’s certainly one aspect of Paul’s work that distinguishes him from almost any comics creator working today is how big his original art is and, therefore, how impressive it is to see it in person. While most American cartoonists work on pages that measure around 10 x 17 inches, Paul’s pages are 19 x 24 inches

You can check out on the gallery’s website the pieces on exhibit. It’s a nice selection, from his early THB work to his collaboration with musician and fashion labels, including recent pages and a newly finished homage to Moebius.

Here’s an article with Paul. Here’s another one at Forbes. Aside from having an incredible body of work, Paul is also very articulate and always gives us food for thoughts regarding the possibilities of our medium, and how far we can always try to push it. Reading his art and life essays on THB was just as great as following HR’s story.

Absolute return

We spent quite some time working on the Absolute Edition of Daytripper. When we first published the story in its trade paperback regular form, we already included drawings and studies from our production, and wrote about the experience. We already viewed that as premium bonus material (considering the focus will always be the story and in this regard it stand on its own just fine). Then, we released a hardcover edition, did a new cover (with a fancy slipcase double spread cover painting) and included even more sketches and studies at the end of the book. We thought that would be it, but DC had this absolute format and at some point in 2018 or 2019, they suggested that we did an absolute version of our book.

What could we do to make it different than the other editions? To make it more? That was the challenge, and we dove deep into it. We included email exchanges with our editor when we were pitching ideas, tracking back our road to what eventually became our story. There are sample scripts (with thumbnails), there are more sketches, and the original pitch document that had the map of the story. There are loads of cover studies for the first issue (which, in those days at Vertigo, was the hardest cover to do and had to be approved by the “cover committee”). Finally, we included the script of the first issue, which shows how we usually write and how much information we put, along with the layouts and sketches of that issue, which have all the information we need that isn’t on the written script. For creators who write and draw their own stories, it can be very informative.

We were extremely proud of our Absolute edition, and really anxious for it to come out and have a life of its own on people’s shelves. It came out in April of 2020.

One month into the pandemic.

Eventually, the print run sold out, which means people found and bought the book, but it feels like it all happened in silence, in secret, as nobody went to comic book stores at that time, nobody did release parties, and everybody had their attention on other matters. I almost didn’t get a copy myself, as international shipping became a mystery. Our copy arrived at the end of that year (or in the beginning of 2021), when people at DC basically had to buy us a copy at Forbidden Planet and mail it to us.

Most people don’t know this edition existed, and we thought that would be the fate of our very special edition of our very special book, but I’m ending this letter with some good news:

Here’s the solicitation:

ABSOLUTE DAYTRIPPER (2026 EDITION)
by FÁBIO MOON and GABRIEL BÁ
$100.00 US | 304 pages | 8 1/8″ x 12 1/4″ | Hardcover | ISBN: 978-1-79950-761-1
ON SALE 03/17/26
The miracle child of a world-famous Brazilian writer, Brás de Oliva Domingos spends his days penning other people’s obituaries and his nights dreaming of becoming a successful author himself—all while wondering when his “real” life will begin. But if authentic existence actually has a beginning, would he even recognize it? Does it start at 21 when he meets the girl of his dreams? Or at 11, when he has his first kiss? Is it later in his life, when his first son is born? Or earlier, when he might have found his voice as a writer?
Each day in Brás’s life is like a page from a book—one that reveals the people and
things that have made him who he is. And like all great stories, each day has a twist
he’ll never see coming…
Crafted by the Eisner Award-winning fraternal team of Fábio Moon and Gabriel
Bá, the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Absolute Daytripper weaves a
hauntingly lyrical tale of life, death, and everything in between. Presenting the
original 10-issue series here in a beautiful, oversize collector’s edition, Absolute
Daytripper also features more than 50 pages of behind-the-scenes material
from the creators.

Be safe, be kind, be curious.

Pa-ZOW!

Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
June 30th, 2025