We Can Never Go Home #3

By Josh Hood, Tyler Boss, Jim Campbell, Matthew Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlon

Brief note before we jump into this whole thing: It’s very cool of Matthew Rosenberg to turn things on their head and put the art team’s names before himself in the credits, and even on the cover. It’s a subtle thing, and to most people doesn’t matter, but to the other creators it’s gotta be a nice twist on what’s widely considered the norm.

Anyway, We Can Never Go Home is fucking rad. There’s not really too many other ways you can say that other than to just say it. A seemingly directionless story about two teenagers on the run from their shitty lives, mixed with superpowers and a very real sense of what someone might do at that age with those powers and/or situations. The down-to-Earth feel of the book, even considering what kind of powers are being thrown around here, really amplify the rawness of the book and really helps to keep it grounded and avoid potentially going into silly territory.

It does, of course, still have a sense of humor especially when it comes to the rest of the superhero genre—or at least the vast majority of it. There’s a couple of really standout pages where Maggie is attempting to find a look for herself—like a superhero costume—and she ends up trying on many-a-famous looks and for the most part slamming the crap out of them. It was brilliant, it was true and the fact that she loved and complimented Liz Sherman’s look (Hellboy, duh) made it all that much better. Even our old pal Dredd gets a shout out here and, again, that rocks. Josh Hood and Tyler Boss really hit every look perfectly in these stellar pages, but that’s not all, no sir.

Hood and Boss, frankly, nail all the pages here in We Can Never Go Home. The same feel that Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlon more than successfully hit with the writing is amplified tenfold by the line work and colors from Hood and Boss. Everything just feels so real; it’s like this is some sort of crazy documentary comic about an incident that really happened, even if Maddie has some insane strength and lightning eyes… Hey, it could happen, YOU DON’T KNOW!

Deep breath… okay, anyway, We Can Never Go Home is the real deal and, yeah, it is fucking rad. It’s one of those comics that’s so damn grounded it just connects with you on many different levels. Some of which you can’t even describe. The art and character work is fantastic, the colors are spectacular and the story has been nothing short of perfection up to this point. That last page shakes things up and will undoubtedly change the dynamic in the issues to come but it’s all good; it’s in the hands of an amazing creative team from an excellent publisher. We Can Never Go Home is most definitely a series you need to check out if you’re a little numb to the same old stuff on shelves every week because it’s fucking rad.

Fucking. Rad.

Yeah, it had to be said four times.