World Within the World: Collected Minicomix & Short Works 2010-2022

by Julia Gfrörer

Julia Gfrörer is quietly one of the most influential cartoonists of her generation. Emerging from the Portland scene at the height of the Obama era, her comics augured the dark times to come, using graphic sex, pitch-black horror, a hunger for exploring the past, and a line cruel as a whip to create her own unmistakable sense of millennial melancholy. Reflecting her DIY ethos, much of her work has only been available in self-published zines or independent anthologies, many of them rare or out-of-print — until now.World Within the World features 30 of Gfrörer’s short stories, culled from a decade of writing and drawing at the bleeding edge of the art form. Her tales of desire, despair, and the universal need for connection span centuries, continents, and cultures from prehistoric teenagers in love to Christian martyrs in the making to modern-day vampires on the make. Along the way her bold, confident work leads the reader to some unexpected places, whether erotica inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe or a post-apocalyptic parody of Frasier.In World Within the World, there is no distinction between the realistic and the fantastic, the psychological and the supernatural, the modern and the medieval, the mundane and the sublime — just the artist’s unflinching vision of how it feels to be human, no matter when or where.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Short Stories, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction, Witches

336 pages, Hardcover

Published February 25, 2025

About the author

Julia Gfrörer is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and author. Her work is often transgressive, invoking occult themes within an ambience of subtly observed historicist concerns.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what to make of this so far. I have a soft spot for twisted, decontextualizing, open-ended takes on folklore, but most of the pieces here are not doing it for me.

The two Poe adaptations are good examples. "The Hideous Dropping Off of the Veil" spends 6 not very interesting pages on Madeleine Usher busting out of her coffin, clawing her way through the House to confront Roderick. Then a similar number of pages of her sexually assaulting Roderick, before the House disappears under the dark waters. Most of "In Pace Requiescat"'s 15 pages is Montresor's (essentially) one-man show in the cellar, complete with (lack of) amontillado. Though there's sex. So.

"Tartarus", one of the longer pieces, has thoughtful things to say about art, art world practies, and AI. I don't much care for the rest though.

Some nice if inconsistent art throughout.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julia Gfrörer's take on the horror genre is rooted very much rooted in the primal and the humane; her stories feel elemental and innate to the core, like an exploration of the nature of humanity itself. I've much enjoyed her longer form works as they've been published (notably Vision , Black is the Color , and Laid Waste ), and have also really liked many of her published minicomics and zines - the latter of which have now been compiled into this collection. A collection of 39 pieces (some of which I've read previously in her printed zines, like "Dark Age", "Too Dark to See", "Palm Ash", "Vanitas", etc.), World Within the World serves as a wonderful showcase of the scope of Gfrörer's talents. Most of this work is by her solely, but a few pieces were written with her husband, Sean T. Collins.

The book opens with Gfrörer having a conversation with a fictionalized version of Athanasius Kircher, a 17th century German scholar. Gfrörer and Kircher dissect the very nature of curiosity - at what point can we complete our understanding of something. Kircher posits that there is no end to this question, that the number of rooms in the House of Man must be infinite, since all interiors have interiors. An existential question arises, one that leads Gfrörer towards the idea of "the world within the world within the world". And thus kicks off a broad and diverse set of minicomics and short stories that all seek to explore the bizarre and the unknown.

The stories here are diverse and encompassing, though themes do emerge amongst the various stories. The outermost exploration of Gfrörer's comics reveal a fascination for more primitive times, starting from early human civilizations and leading towards medieval periods. The latter stories in the collection are of a more contemporary period, but it's clear that Gfrörer perhaps enjoys the period pieces a fair bit more. Digging a little deeper, Gfrörer's comics explore primal conditions of humanity, such as sexuality, lust, desire, etc., all of which tinge the more apparent horror concepts. Sure, supernatural and religious elements are prevalent, but the erotic aspects of Gfrörer's comics are also very much present. It serves to establish Gfrörer's ideas on how horror works - it is rooted deep within us, and it manifests in our most base thoughts and actions. So even though many of Gfrörer's works here end up as esoteric, open-ended or even puzzling narratives, the evocative quality of the individual narratives that emerge across all the stories the more intrinsic aspects of human nature itself.

Julia Gfrörer's visual style is distinguished by her scratchy, jagged lines, hewing together coarse yet somehow still elegant images. The aesthetic serves her period piece stories best, adding a rustic quality to the narrative. World Within the World is a poignant and thought-provoking showcase of a master cartoonist's significant body of work, and I'd additionally recommend checking out her more longer form works that have also been published by Fantagraphics.

[Emanuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julia Gfrörer är ett geni och den här samlingen med korta serier innehåller några av de bästa serierna av någon någonsin.

Boken är ordnad efter när berättelserna utspelar sig, inte efter när de är tecknade. Så de unga grottmålarna som jämför uroxar i "Dark Age" ("It's so bad compared to yours!") är i början och den tröstlöst AI-dominerade konstvärlden i "Tartarus" är mot slutet.

Några klassiska 10/10 Gfrörer-serier:

"Palm Ash" är perfekt. En 16 sidor lång kristen martyrhistoria. Inleds med ett mirakel och slutar outhärdligt. Undergräver bödelns makt, komplicerar offrets roll. Går att analysera i evighet och ändå inte att värja sig mot.

"Flesh & bone": En ung man tar hjälp av en cynisk häxa så att han kan dö utan att begå självmord och på så sätt lura Gud, undvika helvetet och återförenas med sin döda älskade! Explicit sex, slaktade barn, sarkastiska demoner, gråtrunk på gravar! Metal som fan.

"Dark Age": Stenåldersskräck med ett sublimt och lite svårtolkat slut. En solklar favorit som jag fortfarande tänker på!

Men här finns också allt möjligt annat:

"The 39 Ryan Goslings" är underbart tramsig. Det hade kunnat vara en Lisa Hanawalt-teckning men den är samtidigt väldigt gfrörersk med sin drunkade sjömans-Gosling och mordiska misandrist-Gosling. (Min favorit-Gosling: "Two Ryan Gosling templars on a Ryan Gosling centaur")

Några mörka mörka humorstripserier ("Poor people hell" är perfekt)

"The hideous dropping of the veil" och "In pace requiescat" = sexig Edgar Allan Poe-porr

"Tooth & Claw", en lång uppföljare till "Flesh & Bone" som jag inte tror har funnits i tryck alls innan och som fortsätter vrida och vända på samma teman.

Lägstakvalitén här är väldigt väldigt hög och de bästa serierna är oöverträffade.

[David Karlsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+

Vissa serieskapare har ett uttryck som bara klickar med en, och Julia Gfrörer är helt klart en sån för mig. För några år sedan köpte jag en av hennes böcker enbart baserat på omslaget och blev inte besviken, och när jag såg att den här mastiga samlingsvolymen hade släppts var det ett givet köp.

På strax över 300 sidor ryms här 39 kortare berättelser, några på enbart en sida och ett par något längre. De rör sig från stenålder till nutid och oavsett tid och plats utforskar de människans lägre drifter och grymhet, men med en rejäl dos svart humor. Mycket rör sig inom vad som skulle kunna kallas skräck, ofta med sexuella inslag som skulle få en freudian att gå i taket. Det är sällan enkelt och entydigt utan lämnar mycket plats för läsaren att själv fylla i luckorna.

De fantastiska illustrationerna spelar en viktig roll i att skapa stämningen och ett par av serierna är också helt ordlösa. Det är rått och detaljerat på samma gång och trots att Gfrörers stil är väldigt enhetlig klarar hon också av att variera sig, bland annat genom att använda olikfärgade papper som bakgrund till de i övrigt svartvita serierna.

En varm rekommendation för alla med en dragning åt det gotiska, mörka och råa.

[Andrew Rules · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute heater. People will likely compare this to Josh Simmons' work, but there's a far deeper sense of dread and foreboding in most of these pieces. Gfrorer captures the wonder and joy and terror of human emotions -though lust and horror weigh heavily here - with seemingly "crude" (but actually quite talented) pen and ink stories

Also, it's very jarring to see some of her lighter pieces next to horror stories, lol

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gfrörer's stories are tiny vignettes and reveries which are strange, erotic, violent and silly. Reading the anthology back to back feels like having one of those dreams that go on for ten thousand years and then become impossible to describe 30 seconds after you wake up. I feel distressed and somehow comforted.

[Tom Garback]

DNF’d around 75 pages in. Every story left me confused on what it meant, and I didn’t like the art, so I couldn’t see a reason to keep reading.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really uneven, but rarely good enough to warrant wading through the bad stuff. Gfrörer’s art is not what you would call “effortless,” which is a problem for a collection like this—sketches done without much effort. This book would be fine if it were a bunch of zines by some local teenager, but Gfrörer’s press people herald her as “quietly one of the most influential cartoonists of her generation.” On the basis of this work, that’s a quiet condemnation of Gfrörer’s generation.

[Titus · Rating 5 out of 5]

World Within the World is a compendium of Julia Gfrörer's short-form work – 39 pieces in total, ranging from 1 to 40 pages, collected from various anthologies and self-published pamphlets. Barring a few exceptions, most of this work combines period settings, melancholy, sex, death and the supernatural into an exquisite folk-horror cocktail. If I described some of the plots, they could sound like they were written by a stereotypical angst-ridden, self-serious teenage goth, but in fact, Gfrörer manages to make her comics macabre – and indeed gothic – without feeling at all juvenile. On the contrary, they show great sophistication, depth and emotional authenticity.

I love the fact that most of this work takes place in the distant past (early modern, mediæval, ancient), as well as the way it incorporates supernatural elements (ghosts, witches, vampires, zombies). Sometimes I feel like “serious” (or, if you want, “artsy”) comics are excessively wedded to contemporary settings and to realism – perhaps due to the influence of the old maxim “write what you know”, or maybe due to the desire of those making “alternative” comics to distance themselves from the medium’s pulpy mainstream – but I personally love comics that break down those boundaries. I like meandering character studies of despondent, flawed people as much as the next guy, but sometimes I'm glad to mix things up by reading meandering character studies of despondent, flawed people interacting with the undead.

To be clear, I’m not saying Gfrörer makes work likely to appeal to fans of conventional horror comics. The comics collected here are fleeting and open-ended, sometimes even feeling like fragments of broader untold narratives. They're all about mood, atmosphere, and capturing a particular human emotion or experience, and many of them are obscure in a way that leaves me unsure what they're trying to convey. They could fairly be described as “elevated horror”, though I’m not sure I love that term.

Impressively for such a sizeable collection of short work, everything here is at least good, and most of it is great. Moreover, it has a thematic and tonal cohesion that makes it feel less like a compilation of disparate parts and more like a sustained experience, so even if I’d struggle to point to individual comics within it that are stand-out masterpieces, my overall impression is of consistently brilliant work, strong enough that going forward I’ll have no qualms (based on this as well as Vision ) considering Gfrörer one of my favourite comic makers.

That said, there are a few pieces in the collection that don’t fit quite as comfortably, and I liked these ones a bit less (though I still liked them). One of these is “Tartarus”, a contemporary slice-of-life comic about art students working on AI-assisted conceptual art projects; this is decent, but compared to the rest of the collection, it feels like bread-and-butter North American indie comics. Another odd one out is the baffling “The 39 Ryan Goslings”, which is just a single page full of drawings of alternate versions of Ryan Gosling. Perhaps the strangest thing here, and certainly the most comedic, is “Frasier Has Left the Building”, which imagines the characters of the 1990s US sitcom Frasier thrown into an apocalyptic scenario; this seems like it could be hilarious for readers familiar with Frasier, but I’ve never watched that show, so I don’t really get it.

Gfrörer’s art style isn’t especially showy, but her drawings are elegant and sometimes elaborate. Moreover, they have a rough, scratchy quality that perfectly suits the lo-fi horror vibe, replete with hatching that gives everything a suitably dark, murky atmosphere. She mostly uses regular panel grids, creating a steady rhythm that simultaneously makes events feel matter-of-fact while underscoring them with unspoken tension.

So yeah, in short, World Within the World is great. I’m now exceedingly keen to hunt down everything by Gfrörer that I haven’t read yet.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Should be three and a half stars and approaching four. I felt that I didn't like it enough to round up to four though. But I did like it, but it had to grow on me a bit. In the beginning I seriously considered abandoning the book, which is something I rarely do. But I kept plowing through. I started to enjoy it more as the book progressed. I'm not sure if this anthology is ordered chronologically, but it seemed everything was starting to come together as the book continued on.

At first, I had a hard time just interpreting the drawings/illustrations. Many panels were very small, and Ms. Gfrorer's style makes it even harder to figure out what is going on. The book was organized by having different color papers for each individual story. I found that his makes the book appear very attractive, but the stories on the darker colors were even harder to interpret. There were certain situations in which I had to move to better lighting just to be able to see and read what was going on.

Later, the panels were generally larger, and the drawings not quite as muddled. Not to say I didn't like the author's illustration style. I did - a lot! It is a mix of crude drawings (these were the hardest to decipher) which I liked, but she also drew in very sophisticated, detailed and elegant manner- Especially on some of her splash pages. These still had a crude line but were much more linear than the mushier (there must be a better word) cruder drawings. I am thinking these are inked drawings. And some of them are fabulous.

And then there are the stories themselves. Again, I feel that they improved as the book went on. The early ones tended to be oblique and nonlinear. Mauch of the time I was like, "what the hell happened?" Some seemed more like atmospheres and moods, which is fine, but I still had a hard time making any sense of them. As the book went on, the stories were still odd and confusing, but a bit more understandable. I felt I could make better sense of what the author was trying to say.

And then there is the explicit sex and violence. I, being a red-blooded male count this as positive, but it might not be for everyone.

The very last story did leave an impression on me. One of the characters says, "There is a sacred trust ...between the artist and the audience. The artist will do their best to say something worthwhile, and the audience will do their best to hear it." I believe Ms. Gfrorer did her best to say something worthwhile. What's that you say? I was totally confused about what she was trying to say and do? True, but an artist needs to say something in the way they feel best expresses their ideas and feelings, and I believe that was done here. I did my part too. I did my best to listen and understand. And my understanding did grow as well as my admiration for the artist.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

World Within World (2025) by Julia Gfrörer is an impressive hardcover Fantagraphics volume honoring the work of a horror artist, collecting much of her shorter comix, zines, rom 2010-2022. I should also say, to all those artists toiling in poverty at zine fests and alt comix shows all over the world, this book is a way of honoring these forms and sites that get basically no respect in the non-comics world.

I am a fan of Gfrörer, whose three long form works, Vision, Laid Waste, and Black is the Color I have read and reviewed positively here. World Within World deepens and broadens her scope, which is to say an exploration of the nature of what we can know of ourselves through horror, stretched across the ages. Black and white, scratchy, “primitive” art feel, like drawing in desperation quickly at the end of time, which is part of her point, I take it. Dread, terror, ennui, in darkness, with touches of humanity in the Dark Ages, The Plague, The Inquisition, which I also take in some ways to be now, at our worst. And sex as comfort, intimacy, desperate hope. The relationship between horror and the erotic is pretty well established in horror scholarship, and is present here in her thinking. It’s not that boldly expressive (red) E.M. Carroll horror erotica--almost the opposite sort of aesthetic--but it is here, nevertheless, quieter, with tenderness.

The frame for the book, its opening, is a one-page conversation between Gfrörer and (I had to look this guy up) a German scholar from the seventeenth-century, Athanasius Kircher. They have an exchange about the nature of curiosity and understanding. Kircher thinks we’ll never get there, to complete understanding, because there are always worlds within worlds, never-ending. The minicomics from Gfrörer that follow explore that assertion through eerie caverns of dread and gloom and anguish, with a touch of caring.

[Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A freaky, horny, and often unreadable collection (usually because of text size or page color). Overall a pretty antagonistic read with a lot more necrophilia than expected. Incredible craftwork, though. I respect it, and can see the heart in it all when it peaks through, but I’m not sure what Gfrörer is trying to say for the most part. Like many Fantagraphics releases, the transgression seems to be the point.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some pieces, such as River of Tears, were very good and draw quite the emotional reaction. And the art style is impressive and adds to the motif and feelings of the narratives. Unfortunately, I was caught off guard by some of the more graphic and lighter on text pieces and they didn't suit my tastes in addition to making public reading impossible.

[Neil Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Press this into the hands of anyone who loves Emma Rios, and also probably into the hands of anyone who misses the seeing the work of Guy Davis

[Alex Fyffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Debs · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

These comics freaked me out. Rating because I struggled reading the text on the different colored backgrounds.

[The Master · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible reproduction. Bring your magnifying glass.

[Jonathan Harford · Rating 5 out of 5]

spooky and weird and funny and beautiful

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up because I appreciate not understanding what the fuck is happening as long as it is compelling, and this collection inexplicably was.