“It made sense to write about the world that I know, which is old school newspaper cartoonists.”

“I guess I was so immersed in comics, I started thinking about cartoonists,” says Ollmann who authored a weekly strip called “Job’s Palace” for The Hamilton Spectator during the early ’90s. Ollmann is also an avid student of cartooning history, co-curating an ambitious show at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 2019 called “This Is Serious: Canadian Indie Comics.” It was while putting together the AGH show that Ollmann decided his next graphic novel would focus on the life of a fictional cartoonist. In 2007, Ollmann won the prestigious Doug Wright Award for his collection of short stories called, “This Will All End in Tears.” Seabrook” (2017) won rave reviews across North America. “Fictional Father” is Ollmann’s eighth book. “You couldn’t do the grim sort of stuff I do without leavening it with humour throughout. “I depress the hell out of people, but always give them a little glimpse of hope,” Ollmann, 55, says in an interview from his west Hamilton home.

The themes in “Fictional Father” are not happy ones, but Ollmann manages to keep the reader enthralled with comic interludes and well-crafted dialogue. The book follows Caleb as he is forced to come to terms with his father’s legacy, while attempting to deal with his own personal demons and artistic ambitions. When Jimmi’s not in the studio, he’s often out on the town, making the celebrity rounds, a lush and a womanizer. Jimmi is creator of the enormously popular comic strip “Sonny Side Up,” which chronicles the love between a doting dad and his adoring son.īut in truth, Jimmi spends most of his time locked in his home studio, toiling over his strip. “Fictional Father” is a dark comedy, based on the relationship between fictional cartoonist Jimmi Wyatt and his son Caleb. That respect is captured in Ollmann’s latest graphic novel “Fictional Father,” recently released to book stores or online through the Montreal-based Drawn and Quarterly publishing house. These people have a special gift to be able to do that every day.

“The pressure of that has got to be terrifying. “It’s a daunting thought to come up with set-up-set-up-punchline, every day of the year,” says Ollmann, a Hamilton cartoonist with an international following. Schultz (“Peanuts”), Chic Young (“Blondie”), Lynn Johnston (“For Better or For Worse”) or Bill Keane (“The Family Circus”). Joe Ollmann has a tremendous respect for the artists of the golden age of newspaper comic strips, larger-than-life characters able to grind out fresh material, each and every day, sometimes for decades on end.

Fictional father joe ollmann