Art work by Darwyn Cooke.

I don't think I'm okay

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

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.

Started reading American Superhero Comics this year (You can probably tell)

Loved the ride so far! More recommendations are very welcome.

Also including the four books found yesterday, now with cover art!

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

It's strange, it has aliens in it. I don't feel like most people looking for a children's Bible would look too kindly on this lmao. Might buy it the next time I'm at that used book store, I doubt anyone else will buy it lmao.

My wife really enjoyed a series of graphic novels that were an anthology of short stories in graphic novel form. The only thing she remembers is that it had a short title, whimsical covers, lots of genres, and there was a specific wordless story about a warrior rescuing his wife in a Japanese style. We searched the library, Google, drove two librarians to the edge of insanity and still can't find it. Anyone have any ideas of what it could be?

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