Frank Vol. 2

Rating:
Summary: Maybe the best art in the 20th century.
Review: 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'.

Rating:
Summary: Eeee! Not for Children!
Review: I wish some of the previous reviews had noted some of the (admittedly relatively minimum) violence in this graphic novel. While overall it was indeed very surreal and rather amazing, I personally couldn't stomach some of what I'd consider the gory parts. Because of that, I have to give it a lower rating. I'm sorry to everyone who really likes this comic but... some things I don't want to see and even though I know it isn't real, it shocked me. I'm sensitive, I admit it. Anyone who is considering buying this for a child, it's not really for kids and I would only suggest giving it to a teenager as a few things may really upset children and some teens. Most of the stories aren't really bad but two come to mind instantly as being somewhat gruesome. Just be careful. I'd recommend trying to find it in a store first and see for yourself whether or not this particular comic is for you. Aside from that cautionary paragraph, it really is a bizarre graphic novel with enough dream-like (sometimes nightmarish) ambiguity to set your imagination and reasoning on fire. The stories themselves aren't easy to explain, as they are breathtakingly odd and yet familar and highly symbolic in their own way. Just like dreams.

Rating:
Summary: Sorcerous.
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: I Loved It
Review: Jim Woodring's wordless Frank stories are parables from Somewhere Else. "I'm just the secratary here," says Jim, who claims that he doesn't make up these stories, that they somehow pop into his mind whole without any effort on his part. Beautifully drawn and endlessly fascinating, this book is something rare and special.

Rating:
Summary: You betcha!
Review: Jim Woodring's wordless Frank stories are parables from Somewhere Else. "I'm just the secratary here," says Jim, who claims that he doesn't make up these stories, that they somehow pop into his mind whole without any effort on his part. Beautifully drawn and endlessly fascinating, this book is something rare and special.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and bizarre
Review: These books (since this review will show up under Frank vol. 1 and Frank vol. 2) are amazing. Wordless stories drawn in all different styles, always beautiful. The comparison to Krazy Kat is certainly apropos. These stories usually involve just a few key characters playing off each other in each story in different and fascinating ways every time. Manhog, the loser; Jerry Chicken, the mercant; Pupshaw, the "godling" (Frank's pet -- "god" is obviously related to "dog" in this case); and Frank, "our hero" who isn't always moral. In the black and white stories, the backgrounds are drawn in a woodcut style, and the color stories are painted with a beauty that can be compared to (I wish I knew more about this stuff) Dali and such. FRANK is completely different from anything you'll ever read, and it's quite possible (as another reviewer says) that it is the only comic from Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, or anybody to show any real vision. Certainly it's the only one today to use original characters, doing interesting, cartoony doings and still be amazing art. Chris Ware is brilliant but seems capable only of one set of emotions; besides "Ghost World," Daniel Clowes really isn't that great; and I hate R. Crumb except for his very early greeting-card and sketchbook stuff, which amounts to just well-made funny comics (which were all over the place in the fourties, and aren't really that special except that no one is really doing them anymore).

Anyway, these books are wonderful. I give them four stars because I like better the current ongoing FRANK comic magazines from Fantagraphics (five so far, 12 or so pages each). They further simplify the characters and environment to the essence. And they have more PUPSHAW! I can't tell you how much I love Pupshaw and Pushpaw. I would buy an 800-page book if Pupshaw and Pushpaw were on every page.

Anyway, get these books because no one else today is doing work this brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: I Loved It
Review: This is one bugged out disturbing little book of pictures. Simplistic, grotesque, and subtley beautiful all at the same time.Pick it up!

Rating:
Summary: important stories from our greatest living illustrator
Review: Vibrant, stunning, disturbingly familiar and yet shockingly new...this is our boy Frank from our beloved living treasure, Jim Woodring. Buy them all and read them all. Sweet dreams.

Rating:
Summary: More woodchuck dreams from Jim Woodring
Review: 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.