FANTAGRAPHICS AT 50! Another exclusive to Broken Frontier preview today as part of our ‘Fantagraphics at 50!’ Month through August. Today it’s new work from the brilliant Jim Woodring (Frank, Poochytown, And Now, Sir — Is THIS Your Missing Gonad?). Check out pages from Quacky below…

Buy online here

QUACKY

by Jim Woodring

Jim Woodring pays homage to the classic Big Little Book format to put his silent signature character through his most transformative adventure ever.

Jim Woodring has been drawing the otherworldly, allegorical adventures of his cartoon Everycreature, Frank, for three and a half decades. 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.

With Quacky, Woodring adopts the format of 1930s Big Little Books to deliver a text story with illustrations, in which the typically nonplussed Frank’s reactions are told to us explicitly, through narration and his own thoughts. Frank is buffeted by generosity, anguished to see how loving friends perceive him, distraught by the process of aging and physical transformation in a beloved pet, delighted by nature and physical experiences shared with others, and ultimately sees a path toward radical acceptance in the face of trauma.

Fantagraphics at 50 Month runs through August at Broken Frontier. You can see articles as they’re published in one tagged list here. 

— Broken Frontier Staff