Review
"For decades, audiences have seen The Family Circus serve up slices of suburban perfection -- but what if what happens outside of the circle is less than ideal? ... The Fun Family, explores that idea and shares the imperfection behind the American dream....combining deceptively wholesome cartooning with an increasingly dark story." -- The Hollywood Reporter
"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
"Benjamin Frisch strips the saccharine from the Sunday Funnies page in his new graphic novel, The Fun Family. A bitingly dark and oft hilarious portrait of such domestic icons as Family Circus and... Family Circus, Frisch's comic gets meta in the travails of a cartoonist whose panels are far more ideal than the cracks forming around his own personal life." -- Paste Magazine
"THE FUN FAMILY.... a slice of life that is so real it's painful. Don't let the Family Circus style artwork fool you, The Fun Family is definitely not a cute little slice of Americana. Writer and artist Benjamin Frisch wants to lull you into a sense of comfort then show you something ugly, and maybe you'll laugh a little while it's happening. If you're a sicko." -- The Nerdist
"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 La Perdida and Drawing Words & Writing Pictures
"Best Emerging Graphic Novelist" -- The Austin Chronicle
"Readers will be thinking about for days afterward." -- Library Journal
"Required reading for the coming sanity wars, this story is the stuff of my nightmares... Cute-ify this monstrosity any way you like, Mr. Frisch, I will be in the fetal position weeping, giving you a thumbs up for a job brutally done." -- Paul Hornschemeier, author of Life With Mr. Dangerous and Mother, Come Home
"Impressive." -- Comic Wow
"Benjamin Frisch took a good, hard look at Sunday morning fodder like Family Circus and discovered the darkness and complexity lurking just outside of the frame, embodied by the dysfunctional family life surrounding Fun's picturesque comics (within this comic). Frisch's bright, sunny figures wouldn't look out of place on Cartoon Network, which makes the book's darker topics all the more menacing in contrast. If you've ever dismissed newspaper comic strips as shallow and trite, The Fun Family is for you." -- Paste Magazine
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. He is currently based in New York, where he works as a radio producer on Slate's Culture Gabfest and as a freelance artist. His work has appeared on the political satire site Wonkette, National Public Radio, and in the Graphic Canon comics anthologies. His first book, The Fun Family, was released in 2016 by Top Shelf.
