Synopses & Reviews
Beloved cartoonist Robert Fun has earned a devoted following for his circle-shaped newspaper comic strip, celebrating the wholesome American family by drawing inspiration from his real home life... but the Fun Family bears some dark secrets. As their idyllic world collapses and the kids are forced to pick up the pieces, can they escape the cycle of art imitating life imitating art? In his debut graphic novel, Benjamin Frisch presents a surreal deconstruction of childhood, adulthood, and good old American obsession.
Review
"Simply wrenching... Benjamin Frisch subverts the iconography of family cartooning, exposing the seedy underbelly of America's obsession with the perfect family." Jessica Abel, author of Out on the Wire and La Perdida
Review
"Menacing… If you’ve ever dismissed newspaper comic strips as shallow and trite, The Fun Family is for you." Paste
Review
"A surreal exploration of the fractured suburban family, worthy of a Sam Mendes directorial turn... revealing that nothing is ever quite as fun as it seems." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Readers will be thinking about [The Fun Family] for days afterward." Library Journal
Review
"Frisch takes our joyful expectations of sunny, jolly comic imagery and relentlessly tortures us with them in a harrowing tale of surreal family dysfunction." Booklist (Starred Review)
About the Author
Benjamin Frisch is a cartoonist and storyteller from Williamsburg, Virginia. He has an MFA in Sequential Art from Savannah College of Art and Design, and participated in the international artist residency program La Maison Des Auteurs in Angoulême, France.
His work has appeared on the political satire site Wonkette, National Public Radio, and in the Graphic Canon comics anthologies; the Austin Chronicle has declared him the Best Emerging Graphic Novelist.
The Fun Family is his first book.