Dream Daddy: a Dad Dating Comic Book

The video game Dream Daddy is the source material for this comic volume. The original DD is a sweet, tongue-in-cheek video game in which you navigate the life, dating and otherwise, of a single dad who just happens to live in a neighborhood of other, very handsome, single dads. It’s a self-aware take on dating sims, a genre of video game that typically involves a male player wooing a variety of anime schoolgirls. So despite–or maybe because of–it’s genre, Dream Daddy, both game and comic, is sweet, self-aware, and cognizant of issues of race, gender, and sexuality (something dating sims as a whole are…really not known for).

This volume of stories features a series of short graphic tales, each by a different writer/artist team and each following a different dad. Even if you haven’t played the game, you’ll have no trouble keeping up with what’s happening. The stories range from dads getting competitive over their kids’s science fair projects to dads playing Dungeons and Dragons. As with any collection, there are one or two stories that are less emotionally nuanced or topically interesting, but on the whole, this is a good showing. Though inspired by the “dating sim” genre, these are stories about dads living their complicated, everyday lives–while happening to be single and happening to be surrounded by other dads who happen to be single–these stories are pretty PG. (With a splash of PG-13 nudity.) Whether you know the game from which it springs or not, you’ll find this volume of stories charming, smart, endearing, and fun. And then sometimes there’s a weird plot twist involving seagulls…because why not.