Now that you've put down that copy of Watchmen, and your appetite for comic books has been whetted, you think to yourself What to read next? Since your friends are too busy trolling the latest issues of Next and HX to make any coherent suggestions, you obviously turn to Popnography for all your gay comic queries. There is not a stitch of spandex in this next suggestion, in fact it is probably as far away from masculine superheroes as one could get. Fun Home written by Alison Bechdel, was Time Magazine's Book of the Year when it was released in 2006. This autobiographical graphic novel, by the woman who wrote the popular lesbian comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For is about Alison's life growing up in an old Victorian home in rural Pennsylvania with her eccentric family, including her closeted father.
Fun Home follows Alison as she comes to terms with her sexuality, and as she attempts to solve the dark mysteries surrounding her father and his apparent suicide. With her father being a funeral home director the book reads like a smarter Six Feet Under episode, and includes scenes every gay kid can relate to, whether it be looking up the word "gay" in a dictionary (or this case "lesbian") to your first same-sex experience.
Though the subject matter is bleak, Bechdel's constant witty dialogue and internal monologue keep the reader laughing no matter how tough life gets for the Bechdel family. The book is ultimately about the love between a daughter and a father, and how they each deal with their internal struggles to be true to themselves. Fun Home may not have any superheroes, and it may even be a stretch from the apocalyptic world of Watchmen, but these two graphic novels showcase how far the medium of comics can go, and whether it be a superhero saving the world or a girl coming to terms with her sexuality, comics can transport the reader as almost no other medium is capable of. The subtitle for Fun Home is "A Family Tragicomic," and "tragicomic" is the best way to describe this beautiful novel about the long distance two people can live from one another, even if they are under the same roof.
-- CHRISTOPHER RUDOLPH
Previously > The Green Lantern's gay sidekick makes history
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