The Book of Jim by Jim Woodring (No. 71)

The Book of Jim (1993)

by Jim Woodring

REVIEW BY GIL ROTH:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

A distillation of Woodring's quixotic magazine series Jim (a self-described "autojournal" neglected at the time of its original four-issue run), The Book of Jim melds dream comics, automatic writing, and surreal illustrations into one unsettling package. The book is fascinating, both for its constituent parts and for the suggestiveness of their interrelationships. Indeed, The Book of Jim is one of those volumes which can be reread from a hundred different points of entry, in dizzying recursions - a real tail-swallowing experience. The comics, such as the harrowing What the Left Hand Did (with its unforgettable scene of torture as spiritual epiphany) and the cryptic Invisible Hinge (which hints at, yet defers, some profound revelation), join to form one hallucinatory dream-diary, punctuated by intervals of uncanny, lucid-dreamy prose, such as When the Lobster Whistles on the Hill. It all fits together like one of those blurred, unreconstructed dreams you try to grasp just after waking.

The Book of Jim lives up to its author's contention that true horror is "not only fun, but sacred". Woodring fearlessly plumbs his own unpredictable dream-life for material, without manicuring what he finds; the result weds beauty to terror. His drawings boast a hypnotically wavy-line and an unfailing graphic brilliance; dig those garden plots, those critters, those alarming, kaleidoscopic transformations. His line is matched by the fearlessness of his prose, eccentric, and precisely descriptive, which can transform an insect's dead shell into a "fuselage" or wring sheer terror out of an empty playground swing. Art and writing run together to give The Book of Jim the matter-of-factness and disarming spiritual heft of a really good nightmare. With this work, Woodring opened up new horizons in first-person cartooning, creating work at once frightening and profoundly affirmative.

ALAN MOORE:
Jim Woodring's stories manage, by some occult means, to be at once unsettlingly alien and intimately familiar. The effect is not unlike opening a new book to find the illustrated account of a dream you had when you were five and told no one about. Cryptic and haunting, Woodring's work evokes a sense of something important and forgotten. Easily the most hypnotic talent to enter the field in years.

FURTHER READING:

Jim Woodring Official Site

Jim Woodring at Fantagraphics Books

Frank by Jim Woodring (No. 55)

Frank (1992-present)

by Jim Woodring

REVIEW BY CHARLES HATFIELD:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Perched midway between cute and terrifying, Jim Woodring's Frank stories put a lunatic spin on the familiar "funny animal" tradition. These mute, enigmatic fables, starring Frank - a bucktoothed anthropomorph of uncertain species - have a disturbing yet addictive quality, redolent of dreams, at once charming and a little bit off. Frank's world, an oneiric playscape of wavy lines and fluid sensuous shapes, breeds horror and wonders in equal measure. 

Through these stories Woodring explores desires, frustrations and fears - common things in a suggestive, vaguely allegorical way which makes every insight fresh and acute. Within his handsome lovingly rendered drawings (or behind them, or between?) lurk metaphysical queries of the most disorienting sort. The Frank series offers Woodring a seemingly inexhaustible premise, one which allows him to broach the Big Questions in a subversively accessible format. It also offers some indelible supporting characters, among them Frank's aptly named antagonist, Manhog, and faithful companion animal, Pupshaw.

The Frank cannon is relatively small - most of it can be found in two books, Frank and Frank Vol 2, compiled from several series - but presents a discernible pattern of development. Recent stories such as Gentlemanhog and Pupshaw have retreated from the usual graphic cruelty of earlier tales, but have gained in length and complexity. All of the Frank stories, though, are alarming in some way. The best of them either hint at sone deep, essential dread - there's one set in a crypt full of mummified Franks, for instance - or stick pins in our sense of accomplishment, as in Frank and the Truth about Plentitude. they are shaggy-dog stories in the best sense: elusive, provoking, and deeply puzzling, representing a beautiful union of style and subject.

REVIEW BY SCOTT McCLOUD:

Woodring is fantastic... his stuff will outlast all but one in a thousand of his peers. His stuff is a revelation.

REVIEW BY NEIL GAIMAN:
Frank will take you to another world, re-arrange your consciousness and reprogram the inside of your head. It's cheaper than virtual reality, less risky than recreational pharmaceuticals, and more fun than falling asleep.

REVIEW BY CHESTER BROWN:
...for me the joy of reading a good comic book has nothing to do with how long it takes me to read it or how much of a deal it was when I bought it. It probably takes me less than two minutes to read the Frank strip by Jim Woodring... yet I think Woodring is doing some of the best work in comics today.

FURTHER READING:

Jim Woodring's Website

Jim Woodring at Fantagraphics Books

The Illumination of Jim Woodring Documentary