Fun Home
By Alison Bechdel
$19.95

It’s probably a decent time to start throwing around “Graphic Novel of the Year” hyperbole, and this extraordinary daddy-daughter/coming-of-age story from the creator of the acclaimed Dykes to Watch Out For is the one to beat.

Using a complex narrative structure, finely nuanced cartooning, and sly wit, Bechdel bares her anxiety-riddled soul about her unstable 70s girlhood — in particular, her troubled, closeted father, her struggles with OCD, and the slow, fascinating discovery of her own emerging sexuality. Fun Homeis as honest, engaging, haunting, elegant, and powerful as any graphic novel that I’ve read.

This is the kind of book where you could either write a couple sentences or a dissertation. There’s no middle ground. So, suffice it to say, you won’t be able to stop reading Fun Home when you pick it up, and when it’s over, you won’t be able to shake it.

KFR Rating: A+

Mystery in Space with Captain Comet #1 (of 8)
Writer: Jim Starlin
Artists: Shane Davis, Jim Starlin
$3.99

Captain Comet is a super-powered bounty hunter on an outer space metropolis called Hardcore Station, but he was killed during a particularly dangerous job and his body’s disappeared. Even his talking dog doesn’t know what happened…

You have to give the great Jim Starlin propers for maintaining his distinctive hippie-space-madness science-fiction style for this long, but its day has come and gone. There’s just too much exposition, verbosity, and inner dialogue involved, and it doesn’t have a lot of urgency. When it’s over, you get the odd feeling like you’ve just read a lot of words but nothing’s really happened.

The bottom line is if you still really, really dig Starlin, you’ll probably enjoy this to some degree. He does draw a third of the comic, and his art still looks great. Shane Davis pencils the rest in a respectable early-90s Image style.

Alert for those who rocked comics back in the late 80s: The Weird’s in this, which is kind of neat.

KFR Rating: B-

After the jump: the most popular Western hero in comics gets relaunched, and the one crossover event of 2006 that’s actually worth reading.

Annihilation #1-2 (of 6)
Writer: Keith Giffen
Artist: Andrea Devito
$2.99

Had enough of Civil War’s tired, self-important moralizing? Got 52 exhaustion? Couldn’t give a rat’s hairy ass about Planet Hulk (whatever that is)? Brave New World fill you with complete disinterest? Well, look no further than Annihilation my nerdly brethren. This is what you’ve been looking for.

What you need to know: Annihilus of the Forbidden Zone has declared war on our universe, and Thanos (the last great Marvel villain) is his top strategist. While rolling over the Skrull, Kree, and continuing their march through our reality, Annihilus and his army have also managed to capture Galactus and the Silver Surfer in a bid to harness the Power Cosmic. Opposing Annihilus is a cobbled-together Kree army led by Nova that includes other great Marvel space dudes like Ronan the Accuser, Drax the Destroyer, and a couple ex-heralds of Galactus.

This is big, huge slugfest done right. There actually seems to be something at stake. Giffen, as always, gets right to the point, hops from setpiece to setpiece, and maintains a plot free of unwanted clutter: no extraneous text, no pointless, masturbatory inner dialogue. Geoff Johns, Jeph Loeb, JMS, et al, please take note. This is how you do it. As for the art, Devito’s too-clean pencils lack personality, but he has an innate understanding of scope and spectacle, and can deliver a grand splash page.

I read absolutely none of the series or single issues leading up to Annihilation, so you’ll be fine starting here. Sure, you won’t remember anything a few months after it ends, but it looks to be a fun ride.

KFR Rating: B+

Jonah Hex: Face Full of Violence
Writers: Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
Artists: Luke Ross, Tony DeZuniga
$12.99

DC’s moody and horribly disfigured Wild West gunfighter returns in this trade paperback, which collects the first six issues of the successful-ish new Jonah Hex title.

Palmiotti and Gray do a good job of recreating the weird, revisionist, pseudo-horror feel of the old 1970s Jonah Hex stories…although what the new series has also unfortunately retained is an element of complete predictability. Also, Hex himself tends to be a bit too one note.

Fortunately, the writers counter this with some absolutely bizarre and brutal plot elements like killer nuns, incest, and small boy vs. vicious dog pit fights (!!). The majority of Ross’s work is impressive, but it can get a little too photo-referenced for my tastes. Sorry, half of Hex’s face looking like “Hang ‘Em High”-era Clint is technically amazing, but ultimately distracting.

So, finally, what you end up with is an uneven but enjoyable collection of stories. The final one is easily the best — so good in fact that it’ll make you anticipate the next trade.

KFR Rating: B

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