Fun Home: First Impressions

My first thoughts while reading the first chapter of Fun Home were that the title of this graphic novel is supposed to be ironic because everything about Bechdel's home and family seems loveless and dreary. Even the color scheme, with its blue-grays, is capable of bringing out an intense sense of melancholy. Although it is hard to say why, I believe the color scheme works very well for the material in an aesthetic sense, better than a black and white or full-color color scheme would have. 

Despite its dismal tone, at least in the opening chapters, Bechdel was able to keep me interested through her elevated use of language in description and her fine attention to detail. It is as if her way of describing certain things is as precise and intense as her father's attention to detail in his home. In this way, it could be argued that she shares this commonality with her father after his death, despite the fact that she claims to hate this trait of his early in the story. My favorite attentions to detail come in the form of boxes with arrows pointing out small details of the frames that hold relevance to the tale. My personal favorite is on page 39, and it points out the "permanent grease stain from my dead grandfather's vitalis."