Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a 2006 graphic memoir by the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.

Writing and illustrating Fun Home took seven years, in part because of Bechdel's laborious artistic process, which includes photographing herself in poses for each human figure.

[6][7] In The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sean Wilsey called it "a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions.

[9][10] A French translation of Fun Home was serialized in the newspaper Libération; the book was an official selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival and has been the subject of an academic conference in France.

[14][15][16][17] In 2013, a musical adaptation of Fun Home at The Public Theater enjoyed multiple extensions to its run,[18][19] with book and lyrics written by Obie Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron, and score composed by Tony Award-nominated Jeanine Tesori.

"[8] Writing in the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Diane Ellen Hamer contrasted "Bechdel's habit of drawing her characters very simply and yet distinctly" with "the attention to detail that she devotes to the background, those TV shows and posters on the wall, not to mention the intricacies of the funeral home as a recurring backdrop.

For example, to illustrate a panel depicting fireworks seen from a Greenwich Village rooftop on July 4, 1976, she used Google Images to find a photograph of the New York skyline taken from that particular building in that period.

[3][32][33] She also painstakingly copied by hand many family photographs, letters, local maps and excerpts from her own childhood journal, incorporating these images into her narrative.

[47] In addition to their common homosexuality, Alison and Bruce share obsessive-compulsive tendencies and artistic leanings, albeit with opposing aesthetic senses: "I was Spartan to my father's Athenian.

"[52] Yet, hints of her sexual orientation arose early in her childhood; she wished "for the right to exchange [her] tank suit for a pair of shorts" in Cannes[53] and for her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison on one camping trip.

[72] The first chapter, "Old Father, Old Artificer", refers to a line in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the second, "A Happy Death", invokes the Camus novel.

"That Old Catastrophe" is a line from Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning", and "In the Shadow of the Young Girls in Flower" is the literal translation of the title of one of the volumes of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which is usually given in English as Within a Budding Grove.

[29] These visual references include the film It's a Wonderful Life, Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street, the Smiley Face, Yogi Bear, Batman, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the resignation of Richard Nixon and The Flying Nun.

[29][73] Heike Bauer, a professor at the University of London, categorizes Fun Home as part of the queer transnational archive for its contribution towards the "felt experiences" of the LGBTQ community.

[26] Bauer argues that books provide a relatable source, or a felt experience, as Alison uses literature to understand her own feelings in a homophobic society.

[74] Judith Kegan Gardiner, a professor of English and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, views Fun Home as queer literature that bends the literary norms of the graphic novel genre,[75] arguing Bechdel combines both tragedy, normally associated with men, and humor, normally associated with women, by discussing her father's death using a comic book style and dark humor.

Gardiner argues Bechdel takes control of creating an open culture for lesbian feminist work through Fun Home by focusing less on Bruce's wrongdoings regarding minors, and more on the tragedy faced by Alison and the guilt towards his subsequent death after her coming out.

[13] At this conference, papers were presented examining Fun Home from several perspectives: as containing "trajectories" filled with paradoxical tension; as a text interacting with images as a paratext; and as a search for meaning using drag as a metaphor.

[91] In Spring 2012, Bechdel and literary scholar Hillary Chute co-taught a course at the University of Chicago titled "Lines of Transmission: Comics and Autobiography".

The magazine's critical summary reads: "In the end, Fun Home "is an engrossing memoir that does the graphic novel format proud" (New York Times)".

[98] Similarly, a reviewer in The Tyee felt that "the narrator's insistence on linking her story to those of various Greek myths, American novels and classic plays" was "forced" and "heavy-handed".

[9][118] In 2010, the Los Angeles Times literary blog "Jacket Copy" named Fun Home as one of "20 classic works of gay literature".

[120] In October 2006, a resident of Marshall, Missouri, attempted to have Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets, both graphic novels, removed from the city's public library.

Senator Brad Hutto used a four-hour filibuster to delay the voting process and felt that this was "a challenge to academic freedom and an act that would shame our state.

"[136] Bechdel called the funding cut "sad and absurd" and pointed out that Fun Home "is after all about the toll that this sort of small-mindedness takes on people's lives.

[143][144] After a nearly week-long debate in which Fun Home and Bechdel were compared to slavery, Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler, the state Senate voted to restore the funding, but redirect the funds towards study of the United States Constitution and The Federalist Papers; the university was also required to provide alternate books to students who object to an assignment due to a "religious, moral or cultural belief".

[152] The ban included three other books, as well: George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and Kiese Laymon's Heavy.

The production won five 2015 Tony Awards, including Best Musical,[163] and ran for 26 previews and 582 regular performances until September 10, 2016, with a national tour that began in October 2016.

[164] Kalle Oskari Mattila, in The Atlantic, argued that the musical's marketing campaign "obfuscates rather than clarifies" the queer narrative of the original novel.

"[167] However, on April 2, 2024, Gyllenhaal was confirmed to remain involved on the film as a producer when he and his Nine Stories Productions banner signed a first-look deal with Amazon MGM.