Frank Vol. 2 [Paperback]

Jim Woodring (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Frank: Volume Two is absolutely required reading for anyone who enjoyed Jim Woodring's Frank comic book. In these wordless, dreamy comics, Woodring weaves a tapestry with magic, spirituality, and pure emotions. In one story, a hooded woman gives Frank a mysterious top that spins and hovers in the air. When he tries to touch it while it is spinning, the top whips him around and knocks him up against a tree. Then Frank shows the top to his pet the Pupshah (an adorable creature that goes "LLLLL"), who also gets thrown against a tree. The two decide to show the marvelous toy to the Orwellian antagonist, Manhog, whose encounter with the top transforms him into a larvaelike state. Frank and Pupshah nurse Manhog back to health. When he is well, Manhog crawls out into the world and learns about the concept of approval. If, from this description, the story sounds odd or incomprehensible, that's only because it is difficult to provide a linguistic translation of a story that is meant to be "read" in images. This Frank tale, though, is a perfect example of the depth of Woodring's talent and vision.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560972793
• ISBN-13: 978-1560972792
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,372,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe the best art in the 20th century., June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Frank Vol. 2 (Paperback)

Hey! Writer below! I do believe that Frank is most likely the greatest piece of work in the comics field ever and possibly art field of the last half of the twentieth century but you do the other authors a great disservice. Neil Gaiman is responsible for a haunting and beautiful tragedy, Moore for accurate reflections of the tension and violence of the twentieth century and Crumb... well Crumbs generally messed up. But you cannot deny their writing skills! What about Eisner as well? How about Art Spiegelman and his Maus books? read 'proper' books. Buy Frank immediatly, conjurs up your truest dreams, beautiful art, adorable characters and essentially 'true' work. And a bit frightening. And very surreal. And very 'true'.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sorcerous., May 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Frank Vol. 2 (Paperback)

In a field seeded with so many noxious weeds, a single precious flower blossoms all the more beautifully. The cognitively dissonant archgeeks who publish Jim Woodring have previously tried to convince us that pretentious, uninformed pop-culture soup is literature (the Hernandez brothers), that a sorry, self-absorbed jerk's deviant fantasies are art (Robert Crumb), that heavy-handed stories from British authors who seemingly contrive their ideas from the jacket blurbs on books they don't understand are writing (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman), and that juvenile rants and bathetic posing are "alternative" (virtually the entire Fantagraphics catalog). Out of this unreformable nuthouse has emerged, somehow, this wizard Jim Woodring, a perfect, self-contained visionary genius, and the most (or only) significant cartoonist since George Herriman. His flavor might be described as a sort of cross between Dali and Carlos Castaneda, only Americanized and cartoonified (the better to deceive us with). If comic-book people had any taste or consciousness, they might realize this is the only one of their own who will be remembered into the next millinneum, and that promoting his work in the same breath with that of the warped midgets surrounding him serves only to detract from something so rare in this medium: a genuine creative expression of things worth expressing. Leave them, then, to their fannish cults, to their Peter Bagge, their Dan Clowes, their Roberta Gregory; they all deserve each other. This Woodring is the only cartoonist you need. (And for heaven's sake, do buy this book). END

4.0 out of 5 stars More woodchuck dreams from Jim Woodring, January 7, 2000

By 

B. Wilcox (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frank Vol. 2 (Paperback)

Whereas the first (excellent) volume of Frank tales tended to have a moody dreamlike quality, this second collection is a bit more dark and nightmarish--but then everyone who reads Frank has a different reaction; that's what makes Woodring's work so good. My only gripe is the editorial decision to present the first story, "Frank's Real Pa," in a large panel format, thereby taking up a whopping fifty pages when it could have just as easily taken up ten, leaving more room for other Frank tales.