Fictional father

Joe Ollmann, 1966-

Book - 2021

"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. Now sober, Caleb is haunted by his wasted past and struggling to take responsibility for his present before it's too late. His always patient boyfriend, James, is reaching the end of his rope. When Caleb gets the chance to step out from his father's shadow and shape the most public aspect of the family business, he makes every bad decision and watches his life fall apart. Is it too late to repair the harm? Are we... forever doomed to make the same mistakes our parents did?"--

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Subjects
Genres
Gay comics
Graphic novels
Comics (Graphic works)
Published
Montreal : Drawn & Quarterly 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Joe Ollmann, 1966- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
192 pages : chiefly color illustrations ; 26 cm
ISBN
9781770464636
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Jimmi Wyatt is the cartoonist behind the world-famous Sonny Side Up, a comic strip so beloved, he's known as "everyone's dad." But Caleb, the son whose dad he actually is, knows differently. Caleb's grinding resentment has made him "emotionally distant, selfish, spoiled and mean," as his long-suffering partner, James, puts it. Such a person can be difficult to spend a long time with, even (or especially) in fictional form. But Cal isn't just those things; he's also self-searching, analytical, and smart, and Ollmann makes his story a riveting one by making Caleb, the other characters, their relationships, and the world they inhabit feel genuine and immediate. This extends to the fictional comic strip at the heart of the story and the way the world coheres around it. It also lives in the creased and withered faces and slumping, defeated body types and postures of Ollmann's artwork, a stylized cartooning that nevertheless conveys painfully authentic sights and emotions. Caleb's tale is told in two hundred pages of nine-panel grids, a structure that parallels the monotonous struggle a life like Cal's can sometimes be, but these pages are kept animated and seething with several surprising plot turns and an undeniable emotional realism. Ollmann (The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, 2017) has been a well-kept secret of comics for too long. Hopefully, this will blow his cover.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Ollmann's funny, faux-meta memoir follows Caleb Wyatt, the angst-ridden son of Jimmi Wyatt, a cartoonist whose treacly daily strip, Sonny Side Up, earned him the nickname "Everybody's Dad." But Jimmi's actually an egomaniac with little time for his wife and son. By middle age, Cal is a recovering alcoholic struggling to launch his own art career. When Jimmi dies and bequeaths his strip to his son, Cal considers the proposition, to the surprise of his father's staff--who reveal that assistants have drawn it for years--and Cal's boyfriend, James, a Black flight attendant who's had it with Cal's spoiled-rich-kid ways. Cal hires a salty, sober editor-for-hire, whom he meets at a 12-step program, and she offers, "Do you think--in the present climate--that anyone wants to listen to a rich, old white man complaining about an older, richer white man?... Of course they do!" Cal takes this tough-love kick in the pants and "finds his voice." Ollmann's illustrations are ugly-charming, wrinkled and shadowed, but tinted in bright colors (with yellowed "vintage" cartoons a particular visual joy). The framing device, in which Ollmann wrestles with a story that has been told before--Cal's life is reminiscent of the real Dennis the Menace--requires acrobatic parsing. The reward is a complex look at an artist's evolving relationship to the past. (May)

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