One Beautiful Spring Day

by Jim Woodring

A mesmerizing, mind-bending, wordless 400 page comics odyssey by a contemporary master of the form. The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022 The Washington Post,  Best Graphic Novels of 2022 The Guardian , Best Graphic Novels of 2022 Jim Woodring has been chronicling the adventures of his cartoon Everyman, Frank, for almost 30 years. These stories are a singular rarity in the comics form ― both bone-chillingly physical in their depictions of Frank’s travails and profoundly metaphysical at the same time. Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat has the comics language been so exquisitely distilled into pure, revelatory aesthetic expression. Designed as a luxe paperback with vellum jacket, One Beautiful Spring Day combines three previously published volumes ― Congress of the Animals , where Frank embarked upon a life-changing voyage of discovery, Fran , where he learned, then forgot, that things are not always what they seem, and Poochytown in which Frank demonstrated his dizzying capacity for both nobility and ignominy ― along with 100 dazzling new pages conceived and drawn by the author. The result is a seamless, 400 page graphic narrative that forges a new and even more poignantly realized single story that takes readers deep into the hidden meanings of the previous stories and offers the most full, complete, astonishing exposition of Frank and his supercharged world to date. Frank’s curiosity and risk-taking mixed with a dose of, let’s face it, wanton recklessness, takes him on a series of terrifying peregrinations that often leave his soul and body shattered, and the reader in a state of creative exaltation. Suffice to say that if you are a friend to Frank you will find One Beautiful Spring Day to be a thousand-course feast of agonizing bliss, soul-stirring mystery and luminous depth. This is undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 21st century, graphic or otherwise. Black-and-white illustrations throughout

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Surreal, Fiction, Horror, Graphic Novels Comics

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2022

About the author

Jim Woodring was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and enjoyed a childhood made lively by an assortment of mental an psychological quirks including paroniria, paranoia, paracusia, apparitions, hallucinations and other species of psychological and neurological malfunction among the snakes and tarantulas of the San Gabriel mountains.

He eventually grew up to bean inquisitive bearlike man who has enjoyed three exciting careers: garbage collector, merry-go-round-operator and cartoonist. A self-taught artist, his first published works documented the disorienting hell of his salad days in an “illustrated autojournal” called Jim. This work was published by Fantagraphics Books and collected in The Book of Jim in 1992.

He is best known for his wordless comics series depicting the follies of his character Frank, a generic cartoon anthropomorph whose adventures careen wildly from sweet to appalling. A decade’s worth of these stories was collected in The Frank Book in 2004. The 2010 Frank story Weathercraft won The Stranger’s Genius Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for that year. The most recent Frank book, Congress of the Animals, was released in 2011.

Woodring is also known for his anecdotal charcoal drawings (a selection which was gathered in Seeing Things in 2005), and the sculptures, vinyl figures, fabrics and gallery installations that have been made from his designs. His multimedia collaborations with the musician Bill Frisell won them a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006. He lives in Seattle with his family and residual phenomena.

-Walter Foxglove

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't really know what I can write about Jim Woodring's brilliantly surreal adventures of Frank that could possibly come close to describing them, but I'll try. So there's this guy/creature named Frank and he lives in an insane dreamscape wonderland and/or nightmareland filled with bizarre chara---actually, better if I just show you:

There, that should fill you in on what's going on here. No? Okay one more.

So basically that's what the story's about. Actually, it's three stories from three separate graphic novels that Woodring combined into one, with 100 newly-drawn pages to connect the tales, sort of like those fix-up "novels" from back in the day by SF luminaries like Asimov and van Vogt, where they'd simply cram a bunch of shorts together and haphazardly connect them to form one "cohesive" story. Only here, Woodring pulls it off seamlessly.

There's no dialogue --or any words at all -- in this book, but the linework can be so mesmerizing and tripped-out at times that it may take you nearly as long to read as a traditional comic. The lo-res images here in this review don't quite do it justice, so trust me when I say I'd occasionally spend several minutes per page entranced by every little detail.

Genius, and possibly my favorite Woodring yet (though his illustrated "dream journal" Jim is up there). As I alluded to, it's difficult to describe, so just picture 1920s/early 30s Disney cartoons, only with dream logic and dosing on major psychedelics. Sometimes the trips are fun, sometimes freaky, sometimes awe-inspiring, or all three.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Manhog is likely the most maligned, misunderstood, and complicated character in the Unifactor, and therefore one of the most intriguing, I still think Pupshaw is my favorite, for she is the indicator species—a barometer to measure the atmosphere of what is happening or about to happen. My eye is always drawn to her expression in each panel.

Best read before bed so as to inform dreamlife.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of why Jim Woodring is a genius is because while I could tell you essentially what happens in this brilliantly rendered book, it would be utterly meaningless if not for the gorgeous, wordless art. Also MUCH more confusing. Another work of absolute brilliance with hopefully much more to come.

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume combines Frank's adventures in Congress of the Animals, Fran and Poochytown. Adding 100 new pages to make the adventures bleed together seamlessly.

It's a bit maddening to buy another volume... just to replace the 3 books I already have! But for newcomers, this is the best Woodring book money can buy.

I didn't love Woodring the first time I read him, but now I can't understand why I didn't. These comics are just a ton of fun.

[Sirah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Once upon a time, an animal lived in a house with his two breads. He went on some adventures and met some folks and offended some folks, and disaster struck a few times, but he muddled through. Probably.

Yeah, I have no idea what this is. I guess it's supposed to be artsy. It's a weird mashup of cartoony and gory, and I'm just not here for it. There's just so much of it. With no words, it makes a few subtle points, but everything seems like a psychedelic dream rather than a story.

[Peacegal · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so nice to see hapless everycritter Frank and his compatriots again in another meticulously illustrated long-form book. I wish there would have been some color, but Woodring's always dazzling, indescribably weird and ornate fantasy world works in b&w too. The Frank adventures are a treasure in the graphic novel world...seek them out.

[Hamish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. If you didn’t get the memo, One Beautiful Spring Day collects Uncle Jim’s last three graphic novels (Congress of the Animals, Frank, and Poochyown) along with 100 pages of new material which serve to bookend the three novels. I won’t comment further on the previously released material, but the new sections are wonderful, vintage Woodring. They link themselves together in a clever, satisfying way (I grinned like child when it all came together). The final pages are, I suspect, Jim’s goodbye to the world of Frank, and they do so in a very touching way. I genuinely believe that the Frank comics are among the greatest creative works of the last fifty years, and this is a lovely capstone to that oeuvre.

[Titus · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a concept, One Beautiful Spring Day is – as far as I know – unique. Of course, it’s common practice for shorter comics to be collected into larger compendia – whether serialized single issues put into a trade paperback or unrelated short pieces compiled into an anthology – but One Beautiful Spring Day doesn’t just do that. Instead, this hefty tome takes three earlier books – Congress of the Animals, Fran and Poochytown – and then uses 100 pages of new material to stitch them together into a single, continuous narrative. Has anyone ever done this before, in any medium? A series of short films or television episodes turned into a feature-length movie? A handful of short stories reworked into a novel? I certainly can't think of any examples.

With this move, Woodring could be criticized for reselling old rope. I’m sure fans who’ve already bought the three books contained here will feel somewhat short-changed. However, as someone who’d conveniently never read those three works before, I’m not complaining!

The material is presented seamlessly, with no indication of where each of the old books starts or begins, or of which pages are new. Anyone reading without knowing its background would undoubtedly just understand it as a single work. Nonetheless, it doesn't exactly read as a unified, coherent narrative. There's certainly no three-act structure: it's really a series of short episodes, but each event flows right into the next, like a chain reaction of cause and effect. The result is that it feels like a wild, careening rollercoaster ride of madness, or like a vivid extended dream, the reader never knowing where things will go next. There are two larger plot threads that each sustain themselves fairly long and serve to ground the whole thing with some readily comprehensible pathos, but these are more like overarching arcs that catalyze events and provide the characters' antics with a degree of direction, rather than completely focused, streamlined storylines.

It bears stating that, apart from its length and unusual publication trajectory, One Beautiful Spring Day is very much in line with Woodring's other Unifactor comics, i.e. Weathercraft and the ones collected in The Frank Book. The line work is as meticulous as ever, the cartooning just as evocative, the stories just as surreal, psychedelic, vivid and vital. As always, this is work that may at first glance seem like nonsensical slapstick but in fact has great depth, speaking to the big questions of the universe. It looks like Looney Tunes channelled through a lunatic, but really it's more like Looney Tunes channelled through a sage, prophet or shaman. Many of Woodring’s usual themes are explored, such as the nature of reality, alienating labour, fickleness, cruelty and – one of my personal favourites – the (im)possibility of Manhog’s redemption. More than ever, the whole thing is driven by Frank’s boundless curiosity and his insatiable appetite for exploration and discovery; everything is bursting with an envigorating sense of sheer wonder.

In sum, this is a novel concept in terms of recycling already-published material, but more importantly, viewed on its own merit as a work in its own right, it’s an excellent entry in Woodring’s œuvre. I’m tempted to say it’s his most grounded and comprehensible work yet, but that may just be because reading his comics has melted my brain. In any case, I doubt this will convert anyone who doesn’t appreciate his other work, but dyed-in-the-wool Woodring acolytes like me are sure to love it.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aptly described as a "pure" comic by its creator, this is my first introduction to the work of Jim Woodring (although this. It reads like stream of conscious diary entries from a talented artist, playing in between classic cartoon and hallucinogenic aesthetic. The story lines, thankfully, are never overindulgent in the trip out and it also avoids pretension. The absence of dialogue really helps create a balance of being just vague enough and just specific enough to leave enough room for the reader to put their own emotions into the work.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal but fascinating and very human.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never seen anything like this! wish I had had sipped some mushroom tea while I read it, trippy journey. There are zero words yet it tells a story of love, magic, death, discovery, great emotions expressed through art!

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hallucinatory silent movie straight outta a t-shirt shop on the Wildwood, NJ boardwalk circa 1971. Would probably help to enjoy with your favorite beverage…or with one of those psychedelic carrots depicted mid-epic.

Quite the masterpiece-I would love to learn Woodring’s process. Reminds me of the drugs they gave me before my last colonoscopy. Definitely groundbreaking but what planet that ground is on remains to be determined.

[Gurldoggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the simplest sense, this 400-page comic book with black and white illustrations and not a word of dialogue literally takes us through a day in the life of an anthropomorphic cat/rabbit and his pals. But the day's episodes, which loosely tie together, all have a spiritual element, and occasionally detour into grotesque violence. Artist and writer Jim Woodring has taken the storytelling devices established by comic strips like Pogo and Nancy and bent them into undreamed of shapes. Woodland creatures have picnics with demons. Lovers find machines that project their memories for all to see. And somehow the vibe remains cartoon cute. If you're okay with psychedelic chickens confronting existential nausea on their path to spiritual enlightenment on the pages of the Sunday funnies, this a book for you.

[Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Psychedelic stream-of-consciousness. I don’t think I do the right drugs for this though. For all its baroque details everything looks very similar and there wasn’t much else to keep me reading. Not bad just maybe not my thing.

[Joe Bogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Read twice and still can't fully wrap my head around this graphic novel.

[Mandel]

Jim Woodring's Frank comics are peak creations of the medium. No one else I know of (with the exception of Chris Ware) so brilliantly draws upon the unique form and history of comics to create books that not only stand among the best works of the medium, but also articulate what is aesthetically distinctive about it.

Woodring accomplishes this by making his Frank comics completely wordless, allowing him to tell stories that are essentially visual in nature. The main character of Frank, whom Woodring describes as a 'generic anthropomorph', inhabits a surreal, liminal world that operates by its own elusive narrative logic. Accompanied by his 'godling', pet-like companions Pupshaw and Pushpaw, Frank navigates this world, experiencing episodic adventures that are impossible to summarize in words precisely because we are never told the nature of the places and events he encounters, let alone the identities or motivations of the extraordinarily strange beings with whom he interacts.

In One Beautiful Spring Day, we have the longest continuous narrative Woodring has yet produced for the world of Frank. In it, Woodring incorporates material from three previous Frank books (Congress of the Animals, Fran and Poochytown) with over one hundred new pages to create an epic narrative for Frank. In its basic form, the story is clear: Frank has been exiled from his quaint, onion-domed home, cast adrift in a hostile world. Over the course of his journeys, he makes friends and enemies, finds romance, acts heroically and despicably, and eventually finds his way to a kind of homecoming. However, little more can be said about exactly what happens in this story. Frank's adventures seem like primeval myths from some utterly alien culture. We can sense a rich tapestry of metaphorical and symbolic meaning within them, but lack the means for interpreting them. Who are these creatures? Why do they do what they do? By what rules does this strange cosmos operate? All of it is a mystery, yet completely enthralling - grotesque, delightful, hilarious and disturbing all at once.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm tempted to say this is the crowning achievement of alt-comix icon Jim is Woodring, who has for decades been making wordless comics that abut strange creatures. Woodring claims he is merely the vessel for visitations of images/stories that can only be seen as surreal, though possibly mad. Certainly a world of invention, sometimes veering into horror and darkness. Never warm and cuddly, though there is some empathy for his characters and the journies in which they engage.

This is what the publisher says: One Beautiful Spring Day combines three previously published volumes —Congress of the Animals, where Frank embarked upon a life-changing voyage of discovery, Fran, where he learned, then forgot, that things are not always what they seem, and Poochytown in which Frank demonstrated his dizzying capacity for both nobility and ignominy — along with 100 dazzling new pages conceived and drawn by the author."

The story of Frank, a cheery, bipedal creature who he has described as a “generic anthropomorph,” making his way through the Unifactor. So Woodring takes all the Frank works and makes them into a more or less coherent narrative, wordlessly. And since it is basically surreal, you don't always ask "what it is about," but in this 400+ page epic, some gaps are filled, some continuity is established. The work of a kind of consistently weird genius, with unquestioning cartoonist skills, engaged in the making of strange beauty.

Sort of like a combination of 100-year-old comics set in a strange dream world, This one is all black and white, but he also does bold colors in some of his work.

Here is a professional review, so you can see the fascinating and sometimes slightly disturbing images:

https://aiptcomics.com/2022/08/16/one...

[Michelle Tuite · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading 2023
Book 12: One Beautiful Spring Day by Jim Woodring

Another graphic novel I collected from the library before it closed for several months. Lots of praise and awards for this big hunk of graphic novel.

Synopsis: Frank’s curiosity and risk-taking mixed with a dose of, let’s face it, wanton recklessness, takes him on a series of terrifying peregrinations that often leave his soul and body shattered, and the reader in a state of creative exaltation. Suffice to say that if you are a friend to Frank you will find One Beautiful Spring Day to be a thousand-course feast of agonizing bliss, soul-stirring mystery and luminous depth. This is undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 21st century, graphic or otherwise.

Review: While there is lots of praise for this book, I don’t think I am the intended audience. The art is amazing and tells a story that is deep and intense. I did not get it, like I said not for me. My rating 3⭐️.

[Josiah Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

it’s really fun to read all of these classic graphic novels for the first time when they get reissued in fancy formats (made all the better by living about a block from drawn & quarterly). i had seen jim woodring’s work before but never really dug in until now, and this was the perfect way to digest it all. at the start i was a little annoyed by the randomness of the creatures, but i just let the book’s own logic wash over me and ended up having a wonderful time. the art is incredible and Frank is an all-time lovable cartoon character. the hijinks are great but even more are the subtle moral tales embedded within. it really does feel like you’re getting a glimpse of a fully formed world that you will never completely understand. it also feels like a true cartoon for adults — difficult and grisly, but still retaining its cartoonness, never subverting the form. loved it.

[A Cask of Troutwine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully illustrated graphic novel that plays with the ideas of actual consequences in the usually consequence-adverse Unifactor. It doesn't feel like too much of a departure from the earlier Frank material, but you can feel the difference as the story continues and Frank keeps coming back to the consequences of his actions (most notably the destruction of his house that he has to go into debt to replace, injuries that would normally be ignored after the story ended, etc.), and things that would normally be ignored or would reset coming back to haunt him.

Originally published as 3 separate graphic novels, the new linking material linking and framing the earlier material ties in seamlessly. The framing material actually does a good job tying the overall narrative into the greater setting of the Unifactor without breaking it.

[Kevin Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book incredible. It is haunting! It is incredibly beautiful at all times. There isn't any text the entire time! When I write, I often work under the stream of consciousness vibe. Jim Woodring is the type of guy who says that he isn't the writer of this stuff and he is just a vessel or what ever. A lot of art that is of this style is usually lost on me in that sometimes it feels like random stuff that is meaningless. I think this could be seen this way but the disturbing situations and unique art style leaves a huge impression throughout. At every moment I might have been confused but I was more so intrigued by the alien situation that we were facing.

[Estibaliz · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

I went into this without knowing much, if anything at all, about Woodring's art and universe, and therefore being unfamiliar with all the characters here. And, I'm not going to lie, I did enjoy the art till certain extent, but this sure is the staff from dreams, and, more specifically, nightmares.

The old cartoons/silent movies vibe was really cool, but the whole story(? Warning: there's zero text in this volume) was just way too oneiric and LSD for my taste, not to mention a bit disturbing.

All in all, not my cup of tea.

[Norman Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

2023 Eisner Award finalist - Best Graphic Album—Reprint

If a comix artist storyboarded a Fleischer Studios cartoon, it would be something like this book. Full of surreal, ornate black-and-white images, this mind-bending saga is told without words. There's really no way to describe what happens, other than the protagonist travels a strange world and meets lots of strange characters doing strange things. Yet, it is immensely entertaining.

[Becky Steinhauer]

I don't think I can rate this book. At moments, I was saying aww these guys are cute, to feeling like I was on a drug trip, to being way too disgusted to page on. That is without a single word on the page but all the cartoon pictures. The back of the book says this which I think sums it up "According to Jim Woodring, the plots of the mysterious Frank stories he has been drawing since 1990 come to him as if dictated by an outside voice; he does not consider himself to be thier author, but merely their servant." Also, the graphic warning on this book is no joke.

[Jiro Dreams of Suchy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine sleeping in your lovely floating bed with your toaster shaped friends and you wake up to some weird balloon…

Woodring creates these elaborate wild stories with this character just falling into pure absurdity and psychedelia. It’s pretty cool but not something I’d like to read again or return to.

[(Tracy's) Book Balderdash]

DNF. Lol do not be fooled as I was by the title or cover, this is not at all a pleasant comic LOL was expecting less icky horror with the surreal natural landscape images, but this def for the ick and shock feelings. If you liked late night adult swim shows you might appreciate this more. A Not For Me situation

[Keila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find myself lacking the words to accurately describe this textless book. I found myself both focusing harder to understand and parse the context, and also flipping through the pages at lightning speed.

Naturalism meets surrealism with a sprinkle of cosmic horror and rubber hose art? If any of that word soup excites you, I recommend this book.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

More is less. I enjoyed the 3 stories of this "fix-up" more than the whole thing. But that is largely because I rushed through this more quickly than I should have. (Needed to return to library.) You should take your time with Woodring.

[Yaqub · Rating 5 out of 5]

З попередніми роботами автора я не був знайомий, тому весь сюр був для мене максимально несподіваним. Цей мальопис без діалогів, але він все одно незрозумілий, дивний, місцями моторошний, іноді смішний, але завжди дуже цікавий

[Binni Erlingsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean...Jim is just unique. This is sometimes like a dream and sometimes like a nightmare. But for me it's always entertaining. It's just a big trip where you have no idea what is coming around the corner. Love it.