Home After Dark

The graphic novel Home After Dark is author and illustrator David Small’s 2018 follow-up to his critically acclaimed memoir Stitches. The coming-of-age narrative focuses on the struggles of a teenage boy in 1950s California, where small town life means an unending parade of toxic masculinity, bullying, and homophobia. The novel is told in Small’s spare and meticulous pen and waterproof ink drawings, which recall the work of illustrators like Will Eisner and Jules Feiffer, and which propel the story forward often with just a few bits of dialogue or even without any words whatsoever. The minimalist style of the artwork, which Small reworked some 12 times before publication, plays with large fields of negative space and therefore matches the vastness of the characters inability to communicate with one another.

Russell Pruit is 13 years old when his mother decides to leave his Korean War father Mike for a former high school football start, Ollie “Action” Jackson. Blindsided, Mike upends his life in Youngstown, Ohio, and sets out to start over again in California, where his sister June has settled. Mike’s hard-drinking and feelings-averse demeanor is characterized early on when he mocks Russell’s concern about a puppy stranded in a motel parking lot – a puppy that soon after gets run over.

June lives in Southern California, where even with the help of the GI Bill, Mike can’t possibly afford to settle. Instead, he and Russell end up in the small town of Marshfield in North California, where they rent a room from the Mahs, a Chinese couple that also owns a restaurant.



Marshfield is a deeply unpleasant place, where Russell witnesses the bigotry and racism casually and constantly directed at Mr. and Mrs. Mah, where his father sinks further and further into alcoholism, where animals are being brutally tortured and killed by some kind of sadistic monster, and where there are no real friends to be found.

At school, Russell is tormented by bullies who peg him as “queer.” For some measure of escape, he befriends another outsider, an older boy named Warren. Warren is an outcast who lives with his grandmother, loves animals, and accepts Russell despite the other kids’ shunning him – all of which seem like positive bases for a friendship. But soon, Warren is asking Russell for favors that Russell can’t quite wrap his mind around – Warren proposes the two of them hug each other with their clothes off, offering Russell money when Russell doesn’t immediately seem enthusiastic at the idea. Russell does what Warren wants, but this encounter is the end of their friendship.

Next, Russell falls in with Kurt and Willie, two frenemy-ish boys whose ribald, teasing company is just this side of uncomfortable. Kurt in particular never restrains his sexist and homophobic “banter” – something Russell finds unpleasant, even as he has dreams about seeing and inhabiting Kurt’s body. Soon, Kurt and Willie round on Warren, focusing their bullying on Russell’s former friend. Russell stands by, doing nothing to stop them – even when Kurt decides that since Warren carries a rifle around town, he must be the one killing all the animals. What Russell doesn’t know is that the animal serial killer is actually Kurt.



Eager to stay on the good side of the bullies, Russell tells Willie and Kurt about Warren’s ideas about naked hugging. The next day, an enraged and hate-filled Kurt beats the crap out of Warren while Russell and Willie look on, doing nothing to stop the one-sided fight. Afterwards, Kurt plants a few of the name tags from the animals he has been killing next to Warren and accuses him of being the one responsible for their deaths.

In response, Warren hangs himself – something that happens off-page.

Russell’s father abandons the boy without a word, leaving to take a job teaching English in San Quentin prison. Alone and penniless, filled with deep shame about his role in Warren’s death, Russell is about to be homeless when Wen and Jian Mah take pity on him. Kind and generous, the tai-chi practicing Wen and the optimistic Jian feed Russell and offer him a place to stay rent-free – partly because Wen sees something of himself in young Russell. Neither can go back to where he came from: just as Russell is forever barred from Ohio, so Wen can never go back to China. Still, the strict Wen somehow frightens Russell, who is not used to men offering kindness. Even Jian’s long speech about her husband’s hard immigrant life and the struggles he has faced in Marshfield does nothing but confuse Russell about the motivations behind the Mah’s mercy.



Taking advantage of their hospitality, Russell runs away with their restaurant’s money. The graphic novel ends abruptly, without a resolution, but with a note of hopefulness as Jian considers her belief in second chances.