''Jim'' is a

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

series by

Jim Woodring James William Woodring (born October 11, 1952) is an American cartoonist, fine artist, writer and toy designer. He is best known for the dream-based comics he published in his magazine '' Jim'', and as the creator of the anthropomorphic cartoo ...

. It began in 1980 as a self-published

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

and was picked up by Fantagraphics Books in 1986 after cartoonist

Gil Kane Gil Kane (; born Eli Katz ; April 6, 1926 – January 31, 2000) was a Latvian-born American comics artist whose career spanned the 1940s to the 1990s and virtually every major comics company and character. Kane co-created the modern-day versio ...

introduced Woodring to Fantagraphics co-owner

Gary Groth Gary Groth (born September 18, 1954) is an American comic book editor, publisher and critic. He is editor-in-chief of ''The Comics Journal'', a co-founder of Fantagraphics Books, and founder of the Harvey Awards. Early life Groth is the son of ...

. The publisher released four magazine-sized black-and-white issues starting in September 1987. A comic book-sized continuation, ''Jim Volume II'', with some color, began in 1993 and ran for six issues until 1996. ''Jim'', which Woodring described as an "autojournal", contained comics on a variety of subjects, many based on dreams, as well as surreal drawings and free-form text which resembled Jimantha

automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spir ...

. Besides dreams, the work drew on Woodring's childhood experiences,

hallucination A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinati ...

s, past

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomi ...

, and

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

beliefs. It also included stories of recurring Woodring characters such as Pulque (the embodiment of

drunkenness Alcohol intoxication, also known as alcohol poisoning, commonly described as drunkenness or inebriation, is the negative behavior and physical effects caused by a recent consumption of alcohol. In addition to the toxicity of ethanol, the main ...

), boyhood friends Chip and Monk, and, in ''Volume II'', his signature creation

Frank Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Curr ...

Content

''Jim'' is made up of a variety of short comics, text pieces, and artwork. Most of the works are short comics based on Woodring's dreams. Some of the pieces are surreal parodies of advertisements in the '' Mad'' tradition.

Publication

The series began as a photocopied 12-page minicomic that Woodring self-published in 1980. The contents were drawn from Woodring's autojournal—a journal in which he recorded his dreams in comics, prose, drawings, and paintings. Fantagraphics Books co-owner

began publishing the series; the four issues of the first volume ran from 1987 to 1990. Most of the contents of the first volume were reprinted in the book collection ''The Book of Jim'' in 1993. A collection of both volumes appeared in 2014 under the title ''Jim'', subtitled ''Jim Woodring's Notorious Autojournal''.

Vol. I

#(Sep. 1987) #(Jan. 1988) #(Jan. 1989) #(Oct. 1990)

Vol. II

#(Dec. 1993) #*''Manhog Beyond the Face'' (color) #*''Quarry Story'' #(April 1994) #*untitled ''Frank'' story (color) #*untitled #*untitled ''Pulque'' story (color) #*untitled ''Big Red'' story #(July 1994) #*untitled #*''Authorized Only'' (digital color) #*''The Reform of the Apple'' #(Dec. 1994, printed Nov. 1994) #*''Frank and the Toy without Pity'' #*untitled ''Frank'' story (color) #*''Frank in the Cave of his Ancestors'' #(May 1995) #*''Dive Deep'' #*''Peeker'' (color) #*''The Stairs'' #*''Frank and the Sugar of Vengeance'' #*''Echo'' (inside back cover) #(May 1996, printed April 1996) #*''Obviously Not'' #*untitled ''Chip and Monk'' story #*''Boyfriend of the Weather''

Reception

Comics critic Joe McCulloch stated, "What Woodring did better than anyone was promote the idea that the subconscious, the imaginary, and the dreamtime state were perfectly valid terrains for autobiographical exploration" at a time when the confessional work of Justin Green and the mundane stories of Harvey Pekar defined the range of

autobiographical comics An autobiographical comic (also autobio, graphic memoir, or autobiocomic) is an autobiography in the form of comic books or comic strips. The form first became popular in the underground comix movement and has since become more widespread. It is c ...

. ''Jim'' ranked No. 71 on '' The Comics Journal''s list of the hundred greatest English-language comics of the 20th century.

Notes

References

* * *

External links

* * Autobiographical comics Comics by Jim Woodring Fantagraphics titles 1986 comics debuts 1996 comics endings Comics characters introduced in 1986 {{comics-stub