By Zack Quaintance — From its cover on, Home #1 by Julio Anta, Anna Wieszczyk, and team tells a topical story about a young boy and his mother trekking to America for asylum. On the cover, we see our lead characters walking in a group along railroad tracks, beneath a title logo laced with barbed wire that evokes our country’s ugly push for a border wall. This all presages what is to come. See, in Home #1, the villain is the United States’ real and absurdly evil policy started under President Trump to deliberately separate families at the border in order to discourage more migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S.

Throughout most of its first issue, Home trusts that the seriousness of the real events from which it draws its narrative will be enough to engage the reader. There is no need to blur reality when the actions feel too morally-compromised to be real. Home’s opening narration begins with From the desk of the Attorney General of the United States…and from there it delivers a condensed version of a Jeff Sessions speech that feels real. The writing here is sharp and realistic, drawing from actual xenophobic Right Wing talking points as well as the law and order fear-mongering rhetoric that mars U.S. discussion of meaningful immigration reform, and it is all juxtaposed over visuals of a mother and her son moving from Guatemala City toward the north on busses and trains.

It’s a powerful opening, one that sets the mature and informed tone of this book right from its start. The book then segues from this narration to its characters, who naively believe that the U.S. will adhere to its asylum laws. The writing is heartbreaking as we get this introduction, with lines like Don’t be nervous. All you have to do is tell the truth. Tell the nice men what happened to us, and why we need to come live with your aunt…These lines made my stomach hurt and my eyes blur with tears, knowing as I did where the mother-son duo was headed.

Another strength of this comic is the attention to realism within the art. This is conveyed not through a photorealistic style, but through obvious research. There is a splash page early on that depicts the Reynosa-McAllen International Bridge. As it would happen, I spent the first four years of my writing career as a cops reporter for a newspaper in McAllen, and I’ve walked across that bridge many times. Anna Wieszczyk — colored here by Bryan Valenza — must have used an actual photo of the bridge for reference, because the art in this comic gets everything right. It even includes the ever-present birds that hover around that area, given that the Rio Grande Valley is an international birding destination. This all speaks to an incredible attention to detail, one that makes the comic feel truly immersive.

The other point I’d like to make in this review is that this book is not an easy read. There’s no way it could be. That’s not its goal. Its goal, I think, is to reach empathetic people who have maybe become desensitized to the headlines. It seeks to do this by conveying the real human stories and feelings that have accompanied the despicable family separation policy. It wants to point a mirror at us as a society and ask, are we okay with this? It wants to find the humanity involved here, rather than just Tweet GET THE KIDS OUT OF CAGES in all caps; it’s a realistic and heartrending look at how it must feel to seek a bureaucratic and fair asylum evaluation process, and find your child deliberately ripped from your arms by a powerful force you thought might be able to help you in your darkest moments.

The creators wisely slow down the narrative where it hurts the most, forcing the reader to linger in the pain, in the darkness, in the evil that we’ve had carried out in our country. As the preview summary suggests, there is also a third act twist that brings this book more in line with the genre-heavy territory inherent to monthly direct market comics. It’s an outbreak of superpowers, and of everything in this first issue, it’s an ingredient I think has great potential but I’ll have to see where the creators take it. This book through its first issue gets my heartiest recommendation, given the powerful and engaging severity of its realistic take on the modern atrocities our country is committing.

Overall: Home #1 is one of the best and most important comics I’ve read all year, taking the real world atrocities committed by the U.S. family separation policy, and conveying an interesting narrative with empathy and humanity. Do not miss this comic. 9.8/10

ADVANCED REVIEW: Home #1

Home #1
Writer: Julio Anta
Artist: Anna Wieszczyk
Colorist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Image Comics
When a young boy is torn away from his mother while seeking asylum at the U.S. border, something begins to change in him, and it isn’t just the trauma, anxiety, and guilt you’d expect. He doesn’t know it yet, but it’s the onset of superhuman abilities that will change his life forever.
JULIO ANTA and ANNA WIESZCZYK debut with a deeply grounded and heartfelt five-issue series that explores the real-world implications of a migrant with extraordinary powers.
Release Date: April 14, 2021
Price: $3.99
Read It Digitally: Home #1 via comiXology