In Fictional Father, his darkly humorous and self-referential graphic novel, Joe Ollmann (The Abominable Mr. Seabrook) charts the journey of a middle-aged artist to define his life apart from his famous father.
Caleb Wyatt has led an apparently charmed life, owed to the success of his father's long-running comic strip, Sonny Side Up. Beloved by many, the schmaltzy father-and-son daily earned Jimmi Wyatt the nickname "Everybody's Dad." But to Caleb and his mother, Jimmi was nothing but cruel and withholding. Now an adult, Caleb struggles to balance the pressures of life: his sobriety; his own art career, forever overshadowed by his father's; and his boyfriend James who, though supportive, is growing weary of Caleb's privileged, boneheaded behavior. When suddenly faced with the opportunity to take over his father's strip, he must choose between preserving a legacy he resents and carving his own creative path.
Caleb notes that his father's strip was celebrated for the "deceptive simplicity" of Jimmi's lines, a suggestive phrase given the tumultuous reality the comic concealed. By contrast, Ollmann's own style is marked by bold linework and richly saturated colors, with frames full of craggy faces given to bouts of red-cheeked rage and exasperation. This expressive quality suits Ollmann's interest in the potential of comics to represent the messiness of life. Structurally, Ollmann plays with this same idea by incorporating a nonfictional frame story into the book's prologue and conclusion. Readers--especially those with a keen interest in the history and mechanics of comics--will appreciate Ollmann's formal playfulness and emotional honesty. --Theo Henderson, bookseller at Ravenna Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.