For many people around the world, but not me, this Sunday is Fathers’ Day. This gives me an opportunity to do something I enjoy: make a list. Below is a list of 50 fictional fathers. It wasn’t an easy list to make. Initially I wanted to list 50 great dads, men like Atticus Finch and John Walton. But I couldn’t find 50 awesome fathers. To pad out my list of 50 I had to include a few dodgy fathers (eg: Darth Vader, Homer Simpson). And this has given me something to think about. If art mirrors society, where are all the good fathers? Hollywood makes 600 movies a year and a million books are published every year. Finding good fictional fathers should be easy. But it’s not. A few years ago I wrote an article entitled “Fatherless fiction.” In it I shared my observation that many great characters in literature, from Oliver Twist to Batman, grew up without knowing the love of a father. In many children’s stories the moms and dads are either absent or negligent. Parental abandonment is a common trope in children’s literature, and the absence of dads prompted me to write my own children’s story, The [...]