Review by Booklist Review
Brazilians Moon and Ba are twin writer-artists whose drawing styles are very alike--their urban settings resemble Munoz and Sampayo's noirish cities in Alack Sinner, but the details are naturalistic rather than expressionist. Working apart and together, they create deeply satisfying realist and magic realist comics about middle-class, urban students and professionals like themselves. They're in nearly all the stories, and their preoccupations in them, par for young men, are connecting with women and clubbing and partying with friends, activities that easily overlap. In the wordless Estrela, a man and a woman meet in a bar, leave together to walk and chat, kiss, and part, perhaps just for now. Late for Coffee is very similar but more mysterious. A man walks down a street to where a woman challenges him. You're late, she says. I don't know you, he responds. Rambling travel ensues, their talk hints at desire, they kiss, but when he invites her in, she repeats what she first said to him and strolls away. In the two versions of Reflections, each brother works himself through the same spooky scenario about losing a chance to connect. The three-page All You Need Is Love, in which neither brother appears, is even bleaker, this time about failed connection. Striking a related, bittersweetly regretful note is the collaborative ghost story, Happy Birthday, My Friend! The five other stories are just as good. --Ray Olson Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
