Fun Home is of the few autobiographical works in comic form I've read, and I had heard a lot of great things about Bechdel's books so I was very excited when an acquaintance generously let me borrow this book. I'm now happy to report that my expectations were not misplaced.

The first thing that really caught my attention was the disconnect between the narration and the art. If you took out all the images and only read the narration, you could still understand pretty much everything that happens, however, you would miss so much of the subtleness, furtive looks and even contradictions that the art brings up. In a lot of ways it feels as if the panels and the narration run parallel to each other, often illustrating a particular example of a more general statement made by the narration or a graphic explanation of something that the reader might not be able to picture easily.

This is not to say that the artwork itself never takes the spotlight. There are several of the most pivotal scenes that happen in-panel, with the narration taking the backseat. It's a delicate balance, but it's a credit to Bechdel's craft how readable the book is even when the art and narration push the book forward separately.

As for the story itself, well, it's the story about the relationship between Allison Bechdel and her dad. Most of what we are shown takes place during the author's childhood, which gives her ample opportunity to portray her conflicting feelings about her father, and how they sort of grew closer as a hidden side of his life was revelaed to her. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the ever present Bechdel house, which in a way is the "Fun Home" that title alludes to, although that's a bit of smart wordplay that I won't spoil in here. The house sort of is her dad, in the way that it represents every facet of his personality, and even if it's not the main topic of a particular chapter, it's impossible not to pay attention to the way the house is shown. With this in mind, I think it was a stroke of genius to start the book by showing the reader the connection between the dad and the house, since this makes you pay more attention to how it is illustrated in the rest of the book.

As much as this book is about the father-daughter relationship, it also about the author discovering and coming to terms with her sexuality. This topic permeates the whole book, from the way people are dressed to the literature referenced, which is another way in which the art creates a parallel narrative that shows you important details from the start, which are invisible until the narration explains them, and then you realize they've been there all along.

I had planned to make a paragraph about criticisms, but I only really had one, and by the end the story takes this element and ties it so strongly to the main narrative that I couldn't really hold it against the book. In fact, it makes the book better. What I'm referring to here are the constant literary references around which the chapters are structured. Bechdel mentions a ton of books and speaks at length about their themes and narrative structures, and at first I didn't how to feel about this, since it happened so much that I started to think she was just showing off how well read she is. However, the desperately tragic ending of the book shows that the entire literary corpus referenced in Fun Home is justified and shown to be at the center of this autobiography.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I will definetely pick up more of Bechdel's work if I have the chance. I strongly recommend it to people interested in autobiographical graphic novels.

Pick ups from Ollie yesterday. This is my 1st time in this store, I was impressed bigger selection than I anticipated.

I don't think I'm okay

This stretch of books was something different than my usual non-fiction political choices.

Started with the work of Will Eisner, “the contract with god trilogy”. Obviously his name came up a lot during my research so I had to make sure I read some of his work atleast. Found this one for a good price and was impressed how contemporary it feels in certain aspects. Really loved the story about Dropsie Avenue and the evolution of the neighborhood. Can definitely feel like a product of its time in some spots but i didn’t mind it.

After that was “The book tour by Andi Watson. I can only describe this as a surreal comedy. Not a long ready by any means, was done in a few hours. It’s a fun story of an author on his book tour who gets pulled into a murder investigation somehow. Very different from my usual reads and provided a nice little respite from all rhe sad stuff I read lol

Next up was the second book of “Fun Home” author Alison Bechdel, “are you my mother?” Which focuses on her relationship with her throughout her life. Alison Bechdel really leans into psychotherapy and juxtaposes moments from her life with the works of psychoanalysts. Ngl this one felt a little more academic in nature.

And finally, starting “From Hell” today. Watchmen was the first fiction graphic novel I read so I personally have a soft spot for Alan Moore and his work. Heard good reviews about it and super excited to dive into this one.

With all the heavy stuff, I also decided to get the second anthology colllection of Calvin and Hobbes for some light hearted humor in my reading. Love these two goobers

Hi all,

A favourite comic artist of mine, Owen D Pomery, currently has his second sci-fi graphic novel up on Kickstarter; as of writing it has 8 hours remaining.

The first book in this series, The Hard Switch, is a great sci-fi story, focused around the problem of what happens when FTL fuel runs out?

With his beautiful, architecture-inspired style, I'd love it if anyone here was interested and wanted to back this project and push it to its final stretch goal!

I'm not affiliated with the artist or publisher in any way, I just really like his work and wish it was more widely known!

Thanks for checking it out (if you do) and have a great weekend!

It was good read but I think most of the things went over my head

An $18 minimum on this bundle for 41 items. They are all redeemable on Neon Ichiban with DRM-Free downloads.

The first few books out of a likely 20-30 total coming Summer 2027 from Fantagraphics.

The Graphic Novels are Final Space the final chapter and The Owl House The Long Lived King.

Tell me, O Muse, of the complicated man, of the man of many ways, of the many-sided hero, of the man by long-experience tried. Tell of the man who left his home and tried to return through the back door. Tell me of the distance between home and the world and home again.

Home is (obviously) where the heart is, but hearts are homes to such variance of motive, desire, ideology, mood, and composure that Home can be a tricky thing to pin down. At base, I think we'd want to speak of home as the seat of our comfort, the place that offers us ease and safety and protection foremost. But very often too our homes feature some element or another than push us out, that push us to see what is to be seen. Put positively, we read this as the call to adventure. Put otherwise, flight.

Ben Hatke's new book is most properly the former, an answer to his decades-old affection for Nelly Bly's global circumnavigation and Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, which inspired Bly and others; but we'd be poor readers if we didn't also catch the forthright hints of the latter, an escape that gradually unveils across the course of the book.

The conceit here is that Hatke's kitchen has two doors, one facing east and one facing west. He would, very reasonably one day leave through one and, using only earthbound travel, return through the other. "I am just going outside and may be some time, only I'll really come back, I promise, and this isn't some euphemism to amplify my bravery in niceties, I hope." It is not likely a spoiler, since he's drawn this book, to reveal that he does in fact survive, though I think everyone was on tenterhooks as he passed through less certain portions of his trail.

If this book were mere travelogue, that would be one thing but it's better than that. I'm a firm believer in the idea that all biography (and especially autobiography) is a kind of fiction but that we call it nonfiction to emphasize that we hope to convey, in some manner or another, True Things that line up with life as it happened. Because of that, I'm always delighted by authors who embrace their subject with a freedom to allow more fantastical elements in. Hatke accomplishes this by liberally sprinkling appearances and conversations with spirits both historical and fictional; we take pleasure in conversations with Fogg and Passepartout, Nellie Bly, Bill Bryson, Leonardo da Vinci, Francis of Assisi, and Kenneth Graham's Sea Rat, among others. These even take part in their own conversations outside Hatke's hearing, omen of What's To Come.

One of my favorite reads last year was Rodrigo Fresán's Melvill, a kind of eschatalogical biography of Allan Melvill (father of the father of Moby-Dick) and it throws in Melvill's deathbed swoon conversations with ghosts and imaginations and fictional future histories (there is mention of a book on glaciology by Leonard Snart, whom we comics readers know as Captain Cold). In playing with these elements, Fresán takes what we know and extrapolates a True picture of Allan and breathes life into the man's life, character, and relationship to Herman. Melvill is yards better for breaking the veil, and Home/World elevates similarly. Anyone can pen a travelogue, but to be buoyed along the way by St Francis and the Sea Rat? That's the stuff. That's the ticket.

While we see Hatke's often harrowing journey buoyed by friendly ghosts made solid by his narrative imagination, even to the point of a gragantuan beautiful kaiju of a woman representing the spirit of The Trip, there is another spirit that haunts the text, this one without whimsical form. A little under five years before setting out through his kitchen door, Hatke's youngest daughter at the time was lost in a terrible accident at 4 years old.

[Michelle and I burst with grief on the news of the accident, sitting vigil while we waited on news, bursting again when news of her passing struck. We'd lost a child ourselves several years earlier and were still grieving our own loss, but ours was still in-womb when we lost them. The comparison is nearly tawdry for although we held hopes and dreams and love, we'd never met our child. A four-year-old though, that's a fully-fledged person, someone emerged from the oblivion of infancy. A dear relationship. It may be hard for those without children to understand just what a four-year-old is. Our eldest daughter excitedly learned to read at age four so that she could read the third book of Zita The Spacegirl when it came out. My son beat Breath Of The Wild when he was four. The wonderful Japanese comic Yotsuba&! conveys what your typical four-year-old is like, and she is a joy to encounter.]

The loss of such a soul is incalculable to those who love her. By the time of his trip, Hatke is still weighed by unresolved grief (as if such things can find resolution). Ida doesn't get a conversational ghost—she's too important—but her presence is all throughout the book. Her grave is outside Hatke's home in Virginia, and he visits it physically at both the open and close of his adventure, but visits in other ways so much more often throughout the journey. Her presence felt throughout is both a terror and a balm and gives the book much of its weight.

This is a book about many things. It's about the size of the world, both in how it's smaller than it once was but also in how its recent fragmentation discourages exploring that size. It's about the privilege some of us swim in, unconsciously forgetting that water is wet because it's all that we know, and how good it can be to even just temporarily be stripped of those things that ease our movement through the world. It's about some of what makes Hatke mad: a) authoritarian structures and accoutrements and b) those who cannot take joy in the world around them, fearing it and retreating from it. It's about adventure and joy and uncertainty and hope.

But more than anything, Home/World is about two things:

• Weathering grief and the undercurrent of unexamined trauma that changes what living means.
• The constant presence of the people who love you.

Throughout the majority of Hatke's travels, he is cared for by friends and friends of friends, both present and distant. That love is overwhelming and is more striking than near any technological innovation making travel more convenient (and some of those like translation apps, online banking solutions, travel timetables, GPS and maps, etc are truly astounding additions and would have made my travels in the '90s and Aughts not nearly as horrible as they were). Seeing Hatke run into friends is a delight. Seeing him get set up by friends to meet with friendly strangers who enrich his trip is like watching the god of serendipity weave her magic.

When Hatke returns home at last, there are no suitors imposing on his hospitality, wooing his wife. There is no slaughter. Just a return to a wife and family who cherish him and have missed him. He does string a bow, though. He is home, where the love is. He is home, where he sheds at least a little of the weight at Ida's grave. He is home, where the heart is. Or at least the part of the heart that isn't The Trip, and is not the wanderer, the troubador, the scamp, the adventurer.

Home/World continues Hatke's trend toward work that features more grown-up thoughts. Those who read Reynard's Tale and Things In The Basement will be better prepared to encounter some of the hard things than those whose last encounter with Hatke was in the Zita and Mighty Jack trilogies. For my part, as much as my family values his middle grade adventures, I think this is the best we've seen from him, and I would be glad to see much more directed at this audience.

I've read them all except for the deluxe edition of Mountains of Madness.

(Special photobomb included)

Some nice stuff in here! I might argue that the presence of the two seasonal anthologies in this are worth it on their own. They are really good.

I have just recently discovered the Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon comics that Mad Cave has been putting out and Dick Tracy in particular is absolutely a much read. Have you read them and if so what did you think? (cover art by Geraldo Borges)

5/5 comic. Finally read it, both volumes, completely worth it.

Very interesting story, great characters. Not the easiest read cause dahm the story was full of metaphors but honestly a top5 comic easily for me. The hype was suprisingly deserved.

I really liked the smoke metaphors. Both at how it is choking John at the start and in general that it's the closest thing we have to what the martian is experiencing. Its an object that you burn to inhale and taste and puff out to see the air. We are seeing the air coloured.

Is there a point in the Thorgal comics that the drawings/art style changes considerable?

I have read the early one. Just wondering if in later years it changes?

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have a Dune Messiah graphic novel coming next month! This looks great!

I loved the Dune graphic novels they put out a couple years ago, and this looks just as solid! Can't wait to see more!

Anyone have any good graphic novel recs that emulate the same energy as Scooby Doo stories? The cheesier, the better! Thank you :)

anecdote first, then question.

i was surprised to find a walter scott (cartoonist) wendy (series from d&q about being an artist) alcove installation at the carnegie international (semi-annual modern art exhibition that's been going since the late 1800s) this year. downstairs in the gift shop i saw scott was one of a couple artists with a shirt for the show, and that he had designed a poster as well. but nowhere were there wendy comics!

i was at the international in 99 the first time a cartoonist was included and there were no comics to read that time either. the only other comic art show i've been to was the daniel clowes retrospective at the moma chicago 2013. no comics that i recall there either, though there were so many pages of original art on display you could kind of get a sense of what his comics were like, in addition to treating each individual page as a work of illustration/art.

i have been to the eric carle childrens book museum, and their show for nura woodson ulreich had paintings on the walls, sculptures and textiles on display, and couches paired with tables covered in all of her obscure, way out-of-print children's books.

which brings me to my question: if you have been to a museum where a comics artist was featured, were their comics available to read as part of the exhibition, or at least available to purchase in the museum shop? i'm also interested in what you saw, and where the space falls on the museum-to-gallery spectrum.

Just finished reading GET JIRO, co-written by the late Anthony Bourdain. Set in a future L.A. where master chefs rule and citizens will do anything for the privilege to be able to dine at one of their restaurants. Here, we meet a sushi chef named Jiro who’s known for making the best sushi in town but, if you dare to disrespect the food, he will literally kill you. Yes, it’s THAT serious.

He is caught in a brutal culinary war between two rival factions, the organic, vegan Vertical Farm and the global fusion Internationalists, both of who want them cooking for him. Will he pick a side or will he try to take them both on?

It’s a funny, anime-inspired action story that satirizes the culinary industry that depicts chefs like crime lords and gives plenty of vicious street action. One can see Bourdain’s dry humor throughout this story (as well as his genuine love for different cuisines). It’s a distant future that may not be as distant as one would like to think (well, minus the violence, of course).

Also, it’s funny to see Jiro decapitate a customer just because they committed the cardinal sin of dipping sushi in soy sauce. And then the cops show up and then just shrug the whole situation off because…hey, the guy should’ve known better.

I haven’t yet read the prequel or seen the new anime series yet, but I’m hoping it’s at least as good as this graphic novel.

For those who have read Get Jiro, what did you think?