iLit Voices in the Hall: Echoes of Students Past and Present

Reference

Anthony, Trey

Tamaki, Mariko

Ollmann, Joe

Tamaki, Jillian

Dávila, Claudia

Shipley, Jocelyn

McGowan, Maureen

Robinson, Laura

Chang, Richard

Walker, Ian

Sutherland, Kenneth

Silverberg, David

Huggard, Jessie

Potts, Megan

Carey, Brooke

Morey, Courtney

Lemon, John

Elgby, Shawn

Praill, Zack

Scott, Isobel

Ladouceur, George

Ho, Brogan

LaFrance, Marc

Desrochers, Karli

Caton, Christopher

Cato, Jeremy

Porter, Maddie

McLean, Wilbur

Bengert, Cade

Smith, Dianah

Orchard, Taren

Francis, Jeff

Cardinal, Lorne

Words, Language & Grammar

McGraw-Hill/Ryerson

WHEN THE BODY SAGS AND THE HONESTY LAGS 
Mid-Life is the story of John, who at forty becomes a father again with his much younger second wife, which results in a slow, painful attack by flowered baby bags and front-facing baby carriers on his former virility and self-identity. John always believed that age is a state of mind; however, his adult daughters, baby son, energetic wife, stressful job, house full of cats, and flabby body―complete with bloated stomach and sagging bosom―all lead John reluctantly to admit that he is having a midlife crisis. The crisis drives John to yell at his wife, pick fights with his daughters, and miss deadlines at work that put his job on the line. He takes solace from the stress of everyday life with a seemingly harmless infatuation with the pretty children's performer Sherry Smalls, who sings adoringly to him directly from his son's DVD. 
Sherry, meanwhile, is equally desperate to find a distraction in life. Her path to rock stardom has been rudely overtaken by a semi-successful but completely loathsome gig as a children's performer. It pays the bills, and a Saturday-morning television show is on the horizon―that is, if she is able to fire her alcoholic on-again, off-again boyfriend/bandmate. 
As their lives snowball, John's infatuation turns into obsession and a haphazard, fateful e-mail leads to a necessary reality check that neither John nor Sherry may have wanted, but that both will surprisingly welcome.

Mid-Life

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Drawn and Quarterly

"Ollmann spent 10 years researching Seabrook's strange, ramshackle life, and it shows: his book is wonderfully rich and detailed. Nothing seems to escape his attention or his compassion." ―Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
The daring and destructive life of the man who popularized the word “zombie”
In the early twentieth century, travel writing represented the desire for the expanding bourgeoisie to experience the exotic cultures of the world past their immediate surroundings. Journalist William Buehler Seabrook was emblematic of this trend―participating in voodoo ceremonies, riding camels cross the Sahara desert, communing with cannibals and most notably, popularizing the term “zombie” in the West. A string of his bestselling books show an engaged, sympathetic gentleman hoping to share these strange, hidden delights with the rest of the world. He was willing to go deeper than any outsider had before. But, of course, there was a dark side. Seabrook was a barely functioning alcoholic who was deeply obsessed with bondage and the so-called mystical properties of pain and degradation. His life was a series of traveling highs and drunken lows; climbing on and falling off the wagon again and again. What led the popular and vivid writer to such a sad state? 
Cartoonist Joe Ollmann spent seven years researching Seabrook’s life, interviewing surviving family and accessing long neglected archives, in order to piece together the peripatetic life of a forgotten American writer. Often weaving in Seabrook’s own words and those of his biographers, Ollmann’s The Abominable Mr. Seabrook posits Seabrook the believer versus Seabrook the exploiter, and leaves the reader to consider where one ends and the other begins.

The Abominable Mr. Seabrook

A dysfunctional family lives in the shadow of a world famous comic strip and its tyrannical creator 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? Joe Ollmann is a master at portraying inner torment. His characters vacillate and sob and rage. His furrow-browed and deeply-lined cartooning has never been more expressive than in Fictional Father. Caleb storms around and slumps in equal measure as he tries to figure out who he is beyond the neglected son of a famous man. In addition to being a devastating portrait of the Wyatt family, Fictional Father is a hilariously sardonic interrogation of art-making and cartooning in particular.

Fictional Father

New from Joe Ollmann, the creator of Wag! micro books and a monthly comic strip for Exclaim!, Chewing On Tinfoil is a wonderful first full-length book of graphic fiction. In these six beautifully illustrated stories Ollmann peers into the cracks of everyday life, finding inspiration in those slightly uncomfortable moments that make life ... well ... interesting. In experiences extraordinary and mundane, Ollmann catches his motley crew of characters with their pants down: from a chic couple challenging the Grim Reaper's fashion sense; to a childhood anecdote of a ghost story gone wrong; to characters who face the sexism and racism that lingers in our culture. Influenced by a variety of artists, such as Ben Katchor, Charles Schulz, Ralph Steadman and Edward Gorey, Ollmann draws the inhabitants of his world with remarkable craft and an eye for detail, making each character unforgettable. Chewing On Tinfoil is storytelling at its best: highly visual, understated yet wrapped in imagination, and filled with the truth and humour of the human condition.

Chewing on Tinfoil

Idiomatic

What would you do if someone you trusted asked you to believe what you thought was impossible? When high school science teacher and pragmatic realist Mark is inexplicably drawn to renting a cheesy sc-fi flick, it sets in motion a chain of events that makes him rethink everything he has ever believed. After a hysterical breakdown while watching the movie, he reveals to Sue, his longtime girlfriend, that he suddenly remembers being abducted as a child… by aliens. He becomes obsessed with alien-abduction chat rooms and stops leaving the house. As Mark becomes more heavily immersed in his inner world, their relationship slowly disintegrates. All he wants is for her to believe him. But how can she believe him, when it’s just science fiction after all? Joe Ollmann, winner of a Doug Wright Award, has created another page-turner of a graphic novel – a book that is not science fiction, but at the same time asks us to believe.

Science Fiction

Conundrum Press

Ollmann has been called the best writer of short stories working in comics today. Featuring a lengthy introduction, this is the definative collection of those stories. Although the term “graphic novel” has become widely accepted in the publishing industry and the culture at large, it describes long form works. This omnibus makes obvious that there is a need for a term to describe the short story version of the graphic novel. In the same way the short story has recently had a resurgence, winning many literary awards, so too the graphica version. Ollmann won the Doug Wright Award in 2007 for This Will All End in Tears, most of which is contained in this omnibus. The best stories from Chewing on Tinfoil are included, as well as two new stories, written just for this book.

Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People

A collaboration in graphic novel format of two fathers and their anxieties raising their two young sons. In this volume they head out to the country but even there danger lurks behind every bush...

Milo & Sam

BROWN, Andy

In these six beautifully illustrated stories, Joe Ollmann peers into the cracks of every-day life, finding inspiration in those slightly uncomfortable moments, both extra-ordinary and mundane, that make life . . . well . . . interesting. Influenced by a variety of artists, such as Ben Katchor, Charles Schulz, Ralph Steadman, and Edward Gorey, Ollmann draws the inhabitants of his world with remarkable craft and an eye for detail, making each character unforgettable.

This Will All End in Tears

Comic Strips

Insomniac Pr

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Books by Ollmann, Joe