By Zack Quaintance — The premise of Joe Ollman’s new graphic novel Fictional Father — published in May by Drawn & Quarterly — is a rich one. Ollman’s main character in this book, Caleb Wyatt, is the son of a famous newspaper cartoonist, whose life’s work is an old-fashioned strip about a father and son. The book contextualizes just how famous this cartoonist is — not Charles Schultz famous, but close enough to know all prominent cartoonist and many celebrities — and how his strip has impacted the wider world. The protagonist’s father is known affectionately as everybody’s dad, held up as a paragon of nurturing fatherly virtue.

The protagonist, meanwhile, is a rich kid, the only son of this famous cartoonist, and he’s had some problems in his life. He’s an alcoholic with some of his father’s artistic talents, yet he has never quite gotten his creative footing under him, not in any sort of meaningful way. He’s also selfish like his father, and we see this played out in his flagging relationship with his patient, doting husband. Phew. That’s a lot for one book — even one that clocks in at 200+ pages like this one — to tackle. But Fictional Father by Joe Ollman handles it all well, and the result is a complex, compulsively readable, and very humane deep dive into this protagonist’s psyche, a deep dive so thorough it finds that rarefied space of universality.

Fictional Father just works, and it works very well. Ollmann himself shares little to nothing in common with his main character, aside perhaps for some of his experiences with operating in comics, at least not on any sort of surface level. Ollmann is, of course, not the lone scion of a famous cartoonist, nor did he grow up privileged and wanting for nothing. As detailed in some of his earlier works, Ollmann actually comes from a blue collar background. His main character Caleb, however, feels entirely lived in, approached with an impressive and almost admirable degree of empathy, so much so that the way Ollmann writes all his behaviors (even those that are a bit unscrupulous or even cringy) is entirely earnest.

There’s a relatable voice to this graphic novel from the first page, one that takes the idea that all challenges are relative and the travails of Caleb’s very specific life, and conveys them in a blunt way that makes them feel universal, highlighting the commonalities that Ollman, readers, myself, that we all have with Caleb’s struggles, even if the details are wildly different. Ollman has clearly thought about Caleb’s fictional life, fictional failings, and fictional relationships with a very thorough sincerity, and found a stark method of delivery that holds his main character accountable without ever feeling on the nose. To put it simply, there is just such a clear and engaging sense of real life, of the real human experience delivered on every last page of this graphic novel.

So, that is all in here, and almost serves as the foundation of the book’s appeal, the elements which will engage the bulk of the audience. Past that, this book also has much to offer not only comics people (presumably anyone who would be reading a website like this one) but less engaged folks who perhaps spent their childhoods reading cartoon strips over cereal at their own breakfast tables. The thoughtfulness and level of detail that Ollmann applies to his character’s life experience is also applied to the dying medium of the cartoon newspaper strip.

The world that Caleb’s father inhabits — and has inhabited for decades — is a very specific one, and it has certainly ebbed over Caleb’s lifetime. Ollmann’s work here captures that all perfectly. There are shining golden memories of how the popularity of Caleb’s father’s work at its heights, doled out slowly in the book through brief mentions of his relationships with celebrities, of the reverence of fans in past decades, of the steps taken to preserve his legacy, and the list goes on. If that were all that was in the book, it would perhaps risk becoming a cliched love letter to a bygone art form.

But as it is with Caleb’s failings, this book is also realistic about the present and future of the newspaper comic strip. In one scene, Caleb goes out into the physical world in search of a reaction to the newspaper strip…and finds nobody reading newspapers. He rides a bus all day and sees nearly none. Instead, he finds what any of us would find on a bus these days (or rather, in pre-pandemic days) — people with their faces buried in electronic devices. When he buys a stack of papers himself to distribute himself, nobody on the streets wants them, assuming him instead to be suffering from homelessness and entirely unwell.

Really, I think that’s what makes Fictional Father by Joe Ollmann such an engaging success. It’s thoughtful and well-wrought, to be sure, but it also understands that true immersion in storytelling requires not just putting the shine on life but showing the painful and challenging side as well. Armed with Ollmann’s gift for voice, this book does exactly that, landing a strong recommendation from me.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Fictional Father by Joe Ollmann

Fictional Father
Writer/Artist: Joe Ollmann
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Caleb is a middle-aged painter with a non-starter career. He also happens to be the only child of one of the world's most famous cartoonists, Jimmi Wyatt. Known for the internationally beloved father and son comic Sonny Side Up, Jimmi made millions drawing saccharine family stories while neglecting his own son.
Price: $24.95
Release Date: May 2021
More Info: Fictional Father by Joel Ollmann

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.