When talking about comics or examining comic books academically, a point that is most often brought up is the juxtaposition of images and words as the most crucial aspect of the medium. Scott McCloud in his work ‘Understanding Comics,’ which is one of the identified and important books of comics theory, defined comics as a pictorial medium unencumbered the presence or absence of accompanying text. But the average comic reader is so used to the reading experience (the oft-repeated argument - you do not read something if there are no words, do you?) that it seems almost logical to assume that the absence of text takes away something fundamental from enjoying a comic.

It is interesting therefore to note how, in Jim Woodring’s graphic novels, the lack of words adds so much more to the end-product. Frank, the primary character in Woodring’s Frank series, is a cartoon being that you can easily associate with the early Disney style. Frank is a generic funny-animal type that resembles a cat with chipmunk-like buck teeth, or an undernourished hippo. He displays an anthropomorphic behaviour familiar in characters of his ilk, such as walking around on two feet and using his appendages the way humans do. Frank’s adventures are pantomime pieces; the character wafts silently, with a face devoid of expression, through a world devoid of words. But then again, the moment you begin turning the pages, you are too engrossed to notice the lack of word balloons and captions; the expressions of the supporting cast and their actions enough to convey the range of emotions that the characters undergo.

It does not take very long for Frank to slip into a bizarre twilight zone of dream-like sequences. In the very first episode, a worm-like creature burrows his way up his tail, forcing Frank to morph into multiple Rorschach-like shapes in a series of panels that brings to mind the experimental parts of Disney’s Fantasia, where images coalesced into one another in harmony with the symphonic soundtrack. Here, there is no music, but the mind fills in those blanks by taking these static images and making them fluid, almost hypnotic in nature. There is humour, lots of it, in fact, but with a cruel undertone to it, the kind that makes you feel guilty about laughing at the gruesome fates that befall the characters like the Manhog. The stories range from one-page vignettes to long-form episodes, each more disturbing and compelling than the previous one, and the storylines themselves being very random and free-flowing than you would expect.

Of course, the credit for this experience falls squarely on Jim Woodring’s ability to tell a story masterfully. Woodring draw captivating worlds and characters in great detail. The initial Frank stories were in black and white, and the artist’s style resembled that of nineteenth-century engravings – think in terms of your standard Tom and Jerry cartoon rendered as a Gustav Doré wood-cut. Woodring’s pen manages to create expressive, unprecedented textures even in monochrome. As the series changes to colour in the later episodes, it seems just right. Frank’s world never looks as good as when Woodring expands his world-palette to what he had only hinted at in the full-colour covers to the early issues – a psychedelic extravaganza in Technicolor, lurid and glowing. The colouring itself gives fresh insight into Frank’s world, the character distinguished from the rest of the cast by a luminous translucence that sets him apart in his own surroundings.

Two art movements of the early twentieth century contribute a lot to understanding more about the space Frank occupies in sequential art. From a technical standpoint, Woodring’s work can be filed under Surrealism, as the characters in his world succumb to an easy irrationality and a startling lack of logic. It also owes a debt, at least in spirit, to the Dada movement in art, which precedes surrealism (one could argue that Surrealism itself was a natural progression of Dada) in particular Rene Magritte’s rulebook Les Mots Et Les Images. Magritte’s rulebook itself has become canonical in the art and illustration world – everything from newspaper editorial cartoons to classic comic strips like Herriman’s Krazy Kat seem to validate his observations, and Frank is no exception. Another aspect to ‘getting’ the hallucinatory nature of Woodring’s work is to realise that the stories in Frank are linked to Woodring’s own afflictions: As a child, he suffered from visions of gibbering faces around his bed, and dropped out of an art history course because he hallucinated a cartoon frog in the middle of a class. The series therefore becomes an extension of the artist’s own persona – first published as vignettes in an autobiographical series called Jim, it was Frank that broke Jim into the mainstream, and over the last decade, it has been Frank that has defined Jim Woodring’s work.

While Jim Woodring has moved into fine art, his Frank work has been collected and kept in print. Every year, more and more graphic novel enthusiasts to pick up and explore the idiosyncrasies of Woodring, either in the hardcover format Complete Frank or the lower-priced, softcover Portable Frank. While Woodring was not really a pioneer of the dream-comics genre (Winsor McCay had been doing it in 1904, with his Rarebit Fiend strips, for example and even modern-day creators like Rick Veitch dabble in it), his experimental work is still a cornerstone of the alternative comicbook scene, and forces you to rethink your understanding of how comics work.

ROLLING STONE RECOMMENDS

Little Nemo In Slumberland
Writer/Artist: Winsor McCay
Publishers: Taschen

One of the earliest strips of the twentieth century, and one of the most enduring, Little Nemo is a stunning example of how early comic artists such as McCay recognised the potential of the comic medium and used it to great effect. Every Little Nemo strip is a single huge Sunday page that is one self-contained story that occurs in the titular character’s dream and every one of them end with Nemo waking up in bed.

Rabid Eye
Writer/Artist: Rick Veitch
Publishers: King Hell Press

Most known for his collaboration with writer Alan Moore on Swamp Thing and Miracleman in the Eighties, Rick Veitch is one of the few mainstream creators who has had a long-standing interest in dream art. His strips titled Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends are more improvised than drawn, adapting his own dreams to the page. They have been collected into three paperback volumes, and Dream Eye is the first of those.

Drinky Crow's Maakaies Treasury
Writer/Artist: Tony Millionaire
Publishers: Fantagraphics

Tony Millionaire’s Maakies strips are surreal. His style, which combines natural detail with very grotesque imagery, is perfect to draw the single-strip misadventures of a drunken Irish monkey named Uncle Gabby and a sometimes-violent, sometimes-suicidal crow named Drinky. Not for the squeamish or the faint of heart, this series is a syndicated newspaper strip which has been collected into umpteen volumes, the Maakies Treasury the most recent, and among the most comprehensive, among them.

The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack
Writer/Artist: Nichols Gurewitch
Publishers: Dark Horse Comics

The coolest thing about Nicholas Gurewitch’s Perry Bible Fellowship strips is the delayed effect of the humour – the peals of laughter that hit you maybe a few seconds after you’ve taken in the strip. Sadly, Gurewitch brought his web-comic to a halt a few years ago, but the recent publication of this almanac collects all his published work, as well as a few unpublished strips.

The Chuckling Whatsit
Writer/Artist: Richard Sala
Publishers: Fantagraphics

Richard Sala’s expressionism-infused books draw influence from the horror films of his childhood, his stories frenzied tributes to noir cinema as seen through a demented fish-eye lens. The Chuckling Whatsit in particular has a surreal tangled plot, a lot of gore and non-stop action – think Dashiell Hammett remixed by Fritz Lang, with inputs from David Lynch.