Arts
Fictional Father begins with an apology of a kind — or, at very least, an acknowledgement. Told as a self-effacing autobiographical strip, the preface notes the accidental similarity to the real life story of Dennis the Menace and the 1999 novel, The Funnies. But maybe some stories are too good not to tell through a different lens. “I’m sure you’ll make it your own,” Seth tells Joe Ollmann in the piece. And that certainly proved fortuitous. What happens when your life is made the focus of a parents’ ultra-saccharine comic strip? How does one square a true and fictional father when the two are seeming polar opposites? The cartoonist joins us to discuss the work and some broader truths it brings to the front.