They’ve teamed with superstar talents Joss Whedon, Gerard Way, Mike Mignola, and Matt Fraction, but twin brothers Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon do their most amazing work together, where their talents intertwine in ways that make it hard to tell one from the other—like in their first major US release, from 2006—De: Tales.
When I first saw Fábio and Gabriel’s work together in De: Tales, I took it for granted: effortless drawing, stories that express endless personality and transport you to a world familiar but new. The world I’m talking about isn’t just the streets of São Paulo, Brazil, the twins’ home. It’s a spot you can only reach by folding an atlas in quarters, introducing sensibilities and pacing reminiscent of European comics to subject matter most often seen in North American independent comics, colliding with touches of magical realism more nuanced than anything outside of South American prose.
Diana Schutz, Dark Horse’s executive editrix, had her eyes on the twins for years, having met them during one of their annual stays at the San Diego hostel. (They stay in much better digs these days.) She brought us De: Tales, and now she’s bringing us a great new hardcover edition of the book on September twenty-second.
If you loved the deeply character-driven stories of The Umbrella Academy, the humor of Sugarshock, the mystery of B.P.R.D.: 1947, the magic of Daytripper, or the boldness of Pixu, go back to where it started and check out De: Tales, in a new hardcover format designed to sit right next to your copy of Pixu. It’s the book that got them every one of those other jobs, and they earned them all in just over a hundred pages.
