A lanky white boy stands alone in front of a Christmas tree. The precarious globe dangling at eye level distorts his reflection no matter which way he turns. It’s never quite his face he sees, never quite him.
In the kitchen, his parents are drunk. “That night, when the screaming and shouting began, it was like hearing my parents’ real voices for the first time,” he says. Soon his mom’s gone, forever, with Action Jackson.
In David Small’s aching graphic novel Home After Dark, ’50s adolescence is not easy. Never is.
Young Russell is dragged to California by his father, a Korean war vet. Housing plans evaporate. Russell’s father evaporates. Animals go missing, then turn up dead. His kind, strange friend Warren wants the two of them to take off their clothes and hug. His two other friends sense something’s up with Warren.
Russell makes mistakes. Terrible, quotidian mistakes. You see his eyes in the moments that will haunt him. PLEASE READ
