Seeing Things s/c (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Woodring's wordless Frank comics are utterly distinctive, not least in each successive publication of them. Woodring has often taken the same images from black and white to flat, comic-book color to three-dimensional full-color in the transition from one kind of publication to another. This album of four thematic portfolios (rather than stories) in Woodring's most highly developed, volumetric style, however, confirms that what he does in color he can do in black and white. Three of its parts contain charcoal work as full of depth and lighting effects as any of Woodring's color stuff. Those three showcase "scenes of sub-rational political activity," "portraits of forms taken by a cognizant object," and frogs, respectively. The final, color section is a potpourri. Frank and Manhog drop in from Frank occasionally, but most of the figures here are, besides frogs, combinations of organic, inorganic, and artificial parts. Wood-ring introduces, sort of, each part with a "memoir" of his hallucinatory childhood that demonstrates that he is as cheerily, eerily masterful a wordsmith as an artist. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Add Jim Woodring's name to the front rank of alternative cartoonists, along with Crumb, Clowes, Ware, et al. -- Rain Taxi

Woodring is fantastic. His stuff will outlast all but one in a thousand of his peers. -- Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics

[Woodring] demonstrates that he is as cheerily, eerily masterful a wordsmith as an artist. -- Booklist, 1 June 2005 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (March 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560978082
• ISBN-13: 978-1560978084
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #762,401 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars oh god it's jim, July 18, 2005

By	Stan North (Dead center California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seeing Things (Hardcover)

This tome is worth the price of admission for the chapter introductions alone. The rest is the algae on the pond water. If you're familiar with Jim Woodring, you know what to expect, which is that you don't know what to expect: a fresh, heaping gobbet of queasy delight around every page, a snapshot of that lushly sterile suburban landscape where deliciously canted reality keeps intruding like crusty mold fingering its way through the kitchen wall. If you're not familiar with Woodring, I suggest going to sleep immediately after viewing the contents, before they have time to take root in the febrile soil of your high pink garden. Either that, or don't sleep for three days after. Either way, it doesn't get comfortable. I would shower this with 5 stars, but Jim knows better than I that nothing is perfect, not even our own opinions. Once as a child, I chopped a centipede in half with a toy shovel (they were metal in those days); the back half kept walking while the front half stayed put, contemplating, no doubt, an afterlife where you'd need your ass more than your eyes.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invites viewers to observe in a different light, June 22, 2006

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seeing Things (Hardcover)

Jim Woodring's charcoal drawings are images that come from his interest in hidden worlds and lucid art - and SEEING THINGS gathers some of the most intriguing, arranging them in sections by topic: Visible World, Lazy Robinson, Frogs and Color. 'Color' by far seems the most exciting, dramatizing the drawings and providing eye-catching involvement in the symbolism of the unseen - while the black and white charcoal drawings might appeal most to artists who find color distracting. With its blends of surrealism and irony, SEEING THINGS invites viewers to observe in a different light.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch