The fifty-ninth comic: #918 Fun Home
Now, we watched the play of this, which makes it weirder that we didn't check it - we saw the play, went to read the book, and were amazed by it. This is an odd coming of life story, both about Alison's Bechdel discovery that she was lesbian and her father's closeted appearance as a gay or bisexual man. There are so many added complications to this, not worth mentioning here, that mean the story is about more than just that, about the psychological struggles of her father and how she never got through to him even after her coming out - the play ends with an incredibly emotional scene where she asks him for answers and never gets them. It's not as big in the comic, but there are many more small stories, anecdotes about life that set the scene. The art isn't too complicated, distinctive and enough to set the scene. But it's the story that resonates most, not just the coming out story, but that about not understanding a closed off father, where you never learn everything, and some things only come out afterwards. It really hit me - possibly from the musical, possibly from the comic, but in either way from a well told story.