The Long Journey Home Is Never Easy, But So Important

Issue #2 of Home from Image Comics is out this Wednesday, 5/19!

Spoiler-Free Review

Home continues to remind me how lucky I am to not only have people I consider my home but a physical home. A physical place where I can feel safe. Safety is something many of us take for granted. So, if you are literally anywhere right now where you do not feel in immediate danger- take a moment and remember what that feels like. Really let it sink in. Now, imagine you don’t feel that feeling again for days. Weeks. Months. Even years. Imagine the agony and anguish you might constantly feel. It’s not great, is it?

In issue 2 of Home, we spend most of our time with Juan on the run. As you might guess,

Juan is now in a state where he does not feel safe anywhere. He’s not with anyone he trusts or even knows, and he is nowhere familiar to him. He’s missing his mom endlessly and he’s emotionally compromised to the point where he even wishes he could go back to Guatemala- at least then he’d be somewhere familiar, even if still not safe. This issue gave me Home Alone vibes; not in the comedic fun way, but in the “this kid is all alone and yet he’s smart enough to make it on his own. Somehow, this kid finds a way to survive”. Juan is incredibly smart for someone not only his age but someone who is in a completely different country. It can be empowering to see kids rise above their struggles, but it becomes devastatingly terrifying when we think about the fact that children in real life are -forced- to be this brave. They don’t have a choice. This isn’t some grand adventure where we know it’ll all work out in the end- this is real life. It’s not noble and amazing that a kid can rise above broken adults trying to break them. It’s horrific that there are adults out there that are so broken they can’t even remember that this is a child they should be helping, not an “alien” they should be trying to capture like this is Star Wars or something. Home #2 perfectly captures the true terror it is to have a child on the run, particularly from ICE, while still acknowledging how resourceful and wonderful Juan is. It really shows what it's like to not feel safe for so long- which makes the ending of this issue far more rewarding.

The art continues to work perfectly for the tone of this story, leaving absolutely nothing unheard or unseen by us, the readers. We can see perfectly every emotion Juan desperately tries to process, every second, and how hard it is to push through the completely valid emotional upheaval he is fighting through. That continues to be the selling point of the art in this series: the ability to capture and convey human emotion so real and honestly.

Overall Consensus

This series continues to be a prominent and imperative story. Some may see this as very simple storytelling, character designing, and world-building, and in many ways it is. However, I don’t need a beyond-understanding, complex story or world-building for a story to be meaningful, have an impact, or be important. This series continues to tell complex, horrific tales that many real people suffer daily at our border through one synonymous theme: these people are human and deserve to be treated as such. It just so happens that in comics, we sometimes get superheroes to also help us out and I hope to see Juan become that superhero!

I truly enjoyed Home #2 and I’m so beyond excited for the next one! I’m so thankful that this team decided to create and share this story with all of us and I hope this inspires more stories like this to be told in the future.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Bi gives this: