Father’s Day tells the story of a man on the run and a lost long lost daughter that is trying to find him.  While the story opens with a bang and finishes with one, there is little going on in the middle.  For those familiar with comics as a medium, they are likely to see parallels here with a more famous entry, A History of Violence.  A History of Violence (later made into a movie) tells a similar story of a man on the hideout from a violent past, who is once again thrown back into his old life by events outside of his control.

Father’s Day is similar in a lot of ways to this story, at least on the surface and the unique aspects of the story, at least from the first issue seem mostly superficial.  Instead of a blue collar father with a loving family, this is a man on the run whose daughter discovers him, and it is the daughter where any originality in this story might come.  Unfortunately for the story the daughter comes off as mostly two dimensional and although she is portrayed as edgy, it doesn’t really come through for the character either.  The resulting tension between father and daughter is therefore more of an afterthought to the two of them being chased by random mob hitmen.  As with the case of other series, it is therefore likely the same with this one that while it offers this story over four issues, it might have been better to go for more and to build up the characters first as opposed to this story we were immediately demanded to care about the father and daughter that we know almost nothing about.

In a sense there is nothing really wrong with this story, but at the same time it lacking in both originality for its content and in the approachability of the characters.  There is some promise here, as with such randomly presented characters, that indeed something could come of this by the second issue, but equally there is probably not enough of a hook here for the first issue to draw in the readers for another try.

Story: Mike Richardson Art: Gabriel Guzmán
Story: 6.0 Art: 6.0 Overall: 6.0 Recommendation: Pass

Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review