‘We Can Never Go Home Vol. 1’ Comic Review

art by Josh Hood; written by Matthew Rosenberg and Patirck Kindlon


We Can Never Go Home is gritty with a touch of realism, even though the ‘realist’ part is abolished by the fact that they have superpowers.

Perhaps that’s what makes We Can Never Go Home feel a lot more real, though. The story starts off like anyone would expect a horror movie to start, almost eye-rollingly so, with two teenagers making out in a car. Just as things start to get heated, they’re interrupted, but that is where it deviates from the teen horror films that we’ve all come to have a love/hate relationship with. No, from there it goes to a girl who has insanely strange powers, a boy armed with anger and a gun, and a lot of mishaps involving crooks and stolen money.

In particular, I really loved the title. We Can Never Go Home evokes a feeling of deep loss that can’t be fixed, which is essentially what’s happening in this comic: our two main characters, Madison and Duncan, have gotten into it pretty deep. The law is after them, bad guys are after them, and combined with explosive powers (like the ability to throw cars a couple of hundred feet and throw police officers’ bodies onto roofs), they are viewed as a threat to all. And of course, threats must be neutralized.

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Together, Madison (Maddie) and Duncan make a great team. They’re polar opposites of each other—in the first few pages of the novel, Duncan is even referred to as a ‘nerd’ by Maddie’s football-playing boyfriend. It’s a classic trope—hot girl and guy-nobody-would-pay-attention-to-otherwise becoming friends, but it works in We Can Never Go Home. Their dynamic is funny and lighthearted, despite all the seriousness surrounding them, and there’s a trust that exists between them that weaves its way through each of the pages. When they’re confronted by law enforcement, they have each other’s backs. When they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do, it’s agreed that they’re going to do it together. They play off of each other very well and have a genuinely sweet and close friendship, developed quickly through a mutual necessity for the other. They know what each other can do. That’s why they need each other.

The art is vivid and eye-catching—bright yellow pages separate sections from each other, and I particularly enjoyed the connection between the mixtape that Duncan gives Maddie early in the comic to the titles of each of the chapters. There’s a great page where Madison tries on a bunch of different costumes and they’re so bright and detailed, it actually caught me by surprise how funny I thought that moment was, especially considering Maddie’s choice of ‘costume’ in the end (black hoodie, light jeans, very Jessica Jones, and it works).

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We Can Never Go Home is nostalgic, but filled to the brim with blood, guts, gore, and supercharged fight scenes. It also has a great message about gun violence within it, the last few pages of the series delivering some hard stats and getting real with it. It is an incredible tie-in to what is already an amazing comic, and it connects what is happening in the story with what is currently happening in our world today. It easily fills a spot in my ‘Top Ten Favorites of All Time’ when it comes to comics. It’s that awesome, for all of these reasons.

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