Fantagraphics Blog Jim Woodring

{product_snapshot:id=1486,true,false,true,left} A TREE STUMP REVEALS the exact number of years it was alive by its woodrings. But when you look closely at a Jim Woodring cartoon, you are lost in the eternal present. In Frank, he has melded the Olden Days horrific with the modern innocuous. He consistently does this with a seamless line, tracing a parallel universe which keeps unfolding in new visual allegories, as perplexing as they are down-to-earth. Like a woodring, his pen line is always concrete and simple. It circumscribes objects and landscapes with a Spartan clarity that reveals a deep appreciation of the natural environment….

{product_snapshot:id=1500,true,false,true,left}{mosimage} OK, comics are in our blood. I grew up in the golden age of the American newspaper comic strip. My parents subscribed to Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner. The right-wing politics meant nothing to an 8-year-old kid; what meant everything was that it had the best King Features comics, an entire page of dailies and a huge Sunday color section with the mysterious name, “Puck.” From 1932 onward, I devoured the comics, and carefully copied the characters on my drawing pads. I loved to draw, and was good at it, so naturally I dreamed of one day drawing my own…