FUN HOME's Conclusion

I couldn't help, despite the amount of information and insight throughout, that I didn't get a lot of info out of Fun Home. There were so many times that I wanted her to explain more or to show another letter or to expand on a scene, but she never did. I see how it worked in the piece, to make it more of a reflection instead of a narrative, but as a person, not as a critical student of literature, it made me anxious and unfulfilled. But I suppose that's the sign of a good book, etc...that you want it to continue after it ends.

An interesting use of panels in Fun Home, was how they were used to incorporate more text to the page. Passages of letters and novels set background to the narration. I liked this implementation better than in Watchmen, were it became a strange jump from panels to text. They both accomplished the same goal, authentication, but Fun Home seemed more natural (although that's easy to do when comparing a memoir to a story about blue naked supermen).

watchmen ripping off a classic?

The open panels of Watchmen put a bad taste in my mouth, and a very familiar one at that.

"the streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown."

The noir-ish telling of high morals as concieved through hate seemed very familiar with Travis Bickle's daily musings in the movie Taxi Driver:

"All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."

Like Bickle (DeNiro), Rorschach is an extremist nut with his own set of extreme and not totally accurate set of morals. Like Bickle you can see Rorschach's way of using his own form of justice. But also like Bickle's thoughts as told through voice over, Rorschach's scribblings seem like they're trying to be stinging and isolating but at the same time "interesting and full of meaning." The decent metaphor and dark feel made me inclined to not like the novel.

As the story moved however, I got more into it. I find it really interesting how unlikable and messed up these 'heroes' are. I like that one of their main adversaries are college demonstrators ("campus subversion" Ch. 2, pg. 10). It gives an interesting parellel universe (a la Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick) and it's pretty engaging.

Unlike Blankets though, the art is hardly as compelling as the writing and the story. There's something about the typical superhero/greek statue style that seems really overbearing and silly. This kind of stale art is a big part of the reason I stopped reading Super Hero comics so many years ago.

Don't dislike, just throwing out some grievances about "the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced."