Week 12: Comics by Women

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Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, is a graphic novel/memoir about her life growing up. It focuses on her relationship with her father and explores many themes throughout the book such as sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, emotional abuse and dysfunctional family life. 

 While the overall themes of the story was a bit dark and sad, Bechdel was able to tell and re-tell the same story but add new information along the way. She did this through her illustrations and text. The illustrations are drawn in black line art with a gray-blue ink wash. She combines intricacy and detail with seriousness and complexity through her line work and color choices. The way the illustrations are drawn, simple yet distinctly, really capture the themes. Also, the attention to detail that is shown in the backgrounds with the gray-blue ink wash, helps understand the emotions she is trying to portray. We get a sense of gloomy and almost depressing emotions. It feels like the character's emotions subdued and hidden. It really captures the themes and what each person really feels in these situations. 
This graphic memoir was very interesting to read. I enjoyed the way Bechdel added text but also made each image detailed that the text wasn't even necessary. Each panel had a lot of information in it, that I was reading the images to understand the story along with the text. Her story was very powerful and filled with emotions, which I enjoyed a lot.

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