The Oregonian
Hornschemeier retains an audacious sense of what is possible in the graphic arts.— Steve Duin
Chicago Tribune
“Hornschemeier doesn’t simply push the panel edges of the comics medium; he designs entirely off the page, encouraging other creators to join him over the horizon.”
Graphic Novel Reporter
Nothing is visually beautiful, and while all of this would seem to work against the impact of the story, it ultimately conveys a feeling of overwhelming nervousness, or waking up way too early in the morning and blearily staring into an unfamiliar world, and this is what infects you until it all makes sense.... should be a welcome addition to any collection.— Collin David
Steve Duin - The Oregonian
“Hornschemeier retains an audacious sense of what is possible in the graphic arts.”
Collin David - Graphic Novel Reporter
“Nothing is visually beautiful, and while all of this would seem to work against the impact of the story, it ultimately conveys a feeling of overwhelming nervousness, or waking up way too early in the morning and blearily staring into an unfamiliar world, and this is what infects you until it all makes sense.... should be a welcome addition to any collection.”
Jonathan Lethem
“Paul avoids the hammering sentimentality and labored connect-all-the-dots obviousness of too much contemporary work, in any media.”
The Oregonian
“Hornschemeier retains an audacious sense of what is possible in the graphic arts.”
Graphic Novel Reporter
“Nothing is visually beautiful, and while all of this would seem to work against the impact of the story, it ultimately conveys a feeling of overwhelming nervousness, or waking up way too early in the morning and blearily staring into an unfamiliar world, and this is what infects you until it all makes sense.... should be a welcome addition to any collection.”
Publishers Weekly
Hornschemeier's Forlorn Funnies comics series has been something of an underground hit in art-comics circles. His first book collection is a grimly melancholic domestic tragedy, written from the point of view of a young boy named Thomas who's dealing with the death of his mother by retreating deep into a fantasy world while his father gradually collapses into insanity. Hornschemeier has been compared to Chris Ware, and while the two cartoonists have a few obvious points of similarity-a fondness for flat, muted colors, relentless depressiveness and understated drawing that captures the solidity of objects with a few lines-Hornschemeier has a unique sense of formal invention and a gift for subtleties of facial expressions. The metaphor that drives this work is symbolic logic, both the philosophical kind that obsesses the father and ultimately destroys him, and the logic that Thomas imposes on the baffling world by turning everything into simple symbols, like the lion mask he wears to play at being powerful. Hornschemeier renders Thomas's imaginary reinterpretations of his real life in a different style from the rest of the book: childlike single-line drawings, representing everyone as animals. And the metafictional conceit that frames the book doesn't fully come into focus until the final page. The plot is a real three-hanky weeper, but Hornschemeier leverages some of its heaviness into bittersweet absurdity. He's a talent to watch. (Nov. 2003) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Issues 2, 3, and 4 of the comic series "Forlorn Funnies" are compiled to create Hornschemeier's GN debut chronicling the effects of a woman's death on her husband and son. Switching perspective, time, and metaphysical place, it richly envelops the reader in the fog of loss. Thomas Tennant is a precocious and loving seven-year-old who escapes his grief by being useful: he tends his mother's garden, cleans the house, and takes messages from his father's assistant when his father, a professor, misses lectures. His father escapes by retreating within, becoming isolated from the outside world and barely aware of his son's existence. Hornschemeier shows the utmost compassion for both father and son, who react to their grief the only way they know how. Cinematically written and paced, this truthful, emotionally wrenching work could easily be used as the storyboards and bare-bones script for an incredible film. Each panel tells multiple stories, and multiple reads are required to appreciate their complexity fully. Highly recommended for collections with room for serious indie graphic literature, for teens and adults.-Khadijah Caturani, "Library Journal" Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
The "introduction by Thomas Tennant" is actually the entire graphic story. A balding man drifts over landscape and ocean, his mind searching for someone through confused memories and intentions. Strange sea creatures pull him under. Scene change: young Thomas visits his mother's recent grave, wearing the lion mask she had given him. The balding father stands next to him. Mother is dead, and now father and son are lost. Thomas retreats into fantasy where he wears the mask as self-appointed groundskeeper of his mother's garden, room, hiding place—actually, the grave. Father cares for the child and feigns normality. But father's mind refuses to accept the loss yet pursues it while losing touch with everything else. In the end, father and son are released from their grief, but only Thomas survives. VERDICT Hornschemeier uses simple line art and varied color palettes for conveying emotional and narrative detail, capturing graphically with a sort of exquisite beauty the symbolic fantasies of Thomas and the grief-induced psychosis of his father. For adults and mature YAs.—M.C.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Collecting two issues of Hornschemeier's "Forlorn Funnies" series, Mother, Come Home is a stand-alone retrospective tale of family tragedy told by Thomas Tennant, who lost his mother to cancer when he was seven. The story opens after her death, with his professor father struggling to maintain some sense of comfort and equilibrium for himself and his son. Thomas, occasionally donning a superhero cape and lion mask, fights to keep things together by cleaning up after his father, lying to the college when his dad misses yet another class, and tending his mother's garden. Needing more help than his son can provide, the father checks himself into residential care. Forced to move in with an uncle and aunt, Thomas copes by entering a bright, cartoonish fantasy world where everything is how he wants it. His fantasies drive the heart-wrenching climax when he "rescues" his father from the care center. The simplified forms and muted earth tones of the artwork alongside dark and serious themes create links to Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000), but Hornschemeier wields that rare gift of layered subtlety. Be it an almost imperceptible change in facial expressions or the slow death of a flower, he says significant, moving things in a few panels that would take pages to convey in a novel. But the book's greatest strength is the story itself and the lessons it offers for life, loss, and, most importantly, how to move on.-Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
