Silly Daddy

by Joe Chiappetta

Large paperback.white FUNNY NEW BOOK

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels Comics

Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

Joe Chiappetta is an American author and cartoonist, grateful to be married with three children. Currently living in California, his formal education was from Northern Illinois University, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with an emphasis in painting.

While trained in the more traditional arts, his lifetime creative focus has been in writing and cartooning. As one of the key members of the Independent Comics Movement of the 1990s, Chiappetta’s work is respected around the globe. He is best known as the man behind one of the longest running autobiographical comics, SILLY DADDY, which has been a rewarding creative endeavor since 1991. The series has received the following professional recognition:
- Xeric Award Winner
- Ignatz Award Nominee for Outstanding Story
- Harvey Award Nominee for Best New Series

Joe is also the author of a number of action-packed and thought-provoking Christian sci-fi novels, most notably Star Chosen. From his work, one can tell that he enjoys spending time with God, family, science fiction, and corny jokes. Also, at a moment's notice, he's usually up for a Bible study, a good game of chess, bike riding, building forts in the woods, wrestling, finding a big score of free samples while grocery shopping, and foam sword fighting.

Reviews

[Eli Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who was paying attention to self-published comics in the '80s knows about Silly Daddy, but I wasn't and I picked up the whole thing at once, which was pretty intense. Back in the days when an autobiographical comic was still a novelty, Chiappetta started doing some little stories about his daughter and his young marriage. The latter quickly fell apart and it became a story about divorce and unwelcome self-awareness. Harvey Pekar is an obvious reference but Pekar and Chiappetta didn't have a lot in common, besides being kind of hard to live with. Silly Daddy is weird and lonesome and often silly, and as Chiappetta gradually learned how to draw, the words and pictures played together unpredictably to very good effect. Toward the end of the first part (originally collected as The Long Goodbye), his stream of consciousness took an odd turn as he started rewriting his present and future in fantasy terms; for a while, Joe and his daughter became nomads in a scary but playful future world, in which his bizarre visuals really took off. That was followed by further solid stories about Joe and his friends; then a pause, during which he became a born-again Christian. He tried briefly to revive the comic in terms of his new interests-- not very successfully, but I still think whatever Chiappetta does is pretty interesting and I'd like to see more.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Amazon description tells it as good as I can, "This collection shows Chiappetta's considerable evolution as an artist. The drawing and lettering in the early stories, from over a decade ago, looks terribly crude, but the naturalistic family portrait on the book's new cover is genuinely handsome. In between, Chiappetta usually hews a path between realism and caricature; most importantly, he succeeds in visually conveying his characters' emotions." A fun read and not what I was expecting.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The journey from the realization of fatherhood to questions of the internal struggle as well as the journey toward spiritual maturity. Imagine if Phillip Roth spoke about his interior spiritual journey and illustrated comics.

[HeavyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this collection of comics focusing on being a dad, up until the very end where the author/main character turned all Jesus-y religious on me. Groan. I really appreciated that the author was honest about his experiences with abuse.

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

As self-published indie moderately narrative comics go, this wasn't terrible in the least. Captured that feeling of trying to be a good parent without having resolved the question of how to be a sufficiently mature and reasonable adult. The mystery continues.