Artist: Alison Bechdel
As an Eisner Award winner and New York Times bestseller (before there was a separate list for graphic novels), Fun Home helped pave the way for graphic memoirs’ cross-over to mainstream readers. Wielding wry humor and ample literary allusion, Alison Bechdel closely—and often tenderly—examines her complicated relationship with her emotionally absent, closeted father, who committed suicide just weeks after Bechdel came out to her parents. Despite Fun Home’s heartbreaking depictions of a young girl deprived of affection and acceptance—at one point a young Alison kisses her father’s hand goodnight because she’s unsure how else to express her feelings—Bechdel never dips into self-pity. Instead, as TIME wrote, Fun Home “is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.”
MORE: Read “Comic Relief,” TIME’s profile of Alison Bechdel