Fantagraphics has always been a publisher interested in aiding discovery. They are spotlighting forgotten or out-of-print classics, or making archival collections of classic comic strips that might otherwise be lost to history. Just as importantly, the publisher likes to promote compelling, contemporary artists – their comics publishing career began by releasing Love & Rockets, after all.
Braba: A Brazilian Comics Anthology is a prime example of this practice. Collected in its slim 168 pages are stories by 16 incredibly talented Brazilian cartoonists who might otherwise go unrepresented in North America. Co-released with the Brazilian publisher Editora Mino and curated by Rafael Grampá (who is stunning American audiences with his work on Batman: Gargoyle of Gotham), Braba has a reliable pedigree; these artists are presented not only by American admirers but by the very comics community of which they are a part.
The result is a gorgeous collection of immensely passionate pieces (‘braba’, slang for ‘angry’, denotes a sort of groundbreaking quality, emblematic of daring youth). Packed with earnest feelings and abstract realities, the book is almost dizzying in its stylistic diversity.
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Each artist represented here stands apart from one another – the talents range far and wide, their styles purposefully their own, their craftsmanship derived uniquely. Gabriel Goes, for instance, creates deeply textured black and white Tarot illustrations that take up the entire page; the viewer can feel pulled into the illustrations as they slowly bleed red, gaining grisly color to imply a darker narrative that needs decoding.
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Conversely, Rafael Coutinho delivers a kinetic tale of change with bright, bold, singular colors, leaning into cartooning so completely that those colors become part of the storyteller’s unique language.
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Grafitti artist Shiko delivers beautifully rendered and hatched faces washed in subtle tones in a story about infidelity and responsibility that is so striking that the reader feels present in the moments presented, while Paulo Crumbim and Cristina Eiko render an argument over food prep with hilarious, webcomic-like illustrative flair.
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The book swims in that diversity of style. Color – and the absence of color – impacts the emotion of these stories in ways that American comics rarely utilize. Brazilian culture is filled with color both visual and atmospheric, and the stories in Braba want you to know it.
Braba is an impactful and eye-opening anthology that makes the reader want to throw themselves into all those colors, into all that black and white. It makes the reader desperate to taste the flavor of the culture and experience its sounds – it’s an anthology that aids discovery and will send readers scrambling to learn more about these voices.
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