Mother, Come Home is Paul Hornschemeier's piercing graphic-novel debut. It secured the cartoonist's place as one of his generation's most skillful and ambitious practitioners; and proved a harbinger of the subject matter that the artist would go on to explore most consistently in later work: the nuclear family. Mother, Come Home quietly studies the inner lives of recently widowed David and his 7-year-old son, Thomas; both are unable to deal with their grief directly. Eisner-, Harvey-, and Ignatz-Award-nominated Hornschemeier's controlled brushwork is clean, and his nine-panel page layouts pace David's inexorable descent into utter despair. Hornschemeier is equally precise when it comes to Mother, Come Home's color palette: subdued but warm, which suits the story's melancholy and contemplative mode. Mother, Come Home is masterfully drawn; a powerful work with universal themes of anguish and loss.

• TPB
  3/7/2021