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Who is "Jim"?

Jim Woodring was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and enjoyed a childhood made interesting by frequent hallucinations, apparitions, disembodied voices and other psychological malfunctions.
Despite the generally frightening nature of his delusions he learned to accept them as part of life and was accordingly a reasonably cheerful and good-natured lad.
After barely graduating from high school Woodring got a job as a garbage man and lived in picturesque squalor as he set about the task of capturing his inner life in words and pictures.
Some of these fledgling efforts were printed in various “underground” publications of the day: Two-Bit Comics (a weekly tabloid), the Los Angeles Free Press, and an early effort at self-publishing, The Little Swimmer.
Gradually he developed a number of serviceable drawing styles and became a full-time freelance cartoonist, doing work primarily for advertising agencies and public relations companies but also working on whatever projects came his way, such as student films and other collaborative art.
In 1980 he self-published the first issue of his “illustrated autojournal”, JIM, containing comics, drawings and stories drawn from his indelible childhood experiences.
Eventually Woodring landed a salaried job in an L.A. animation studio where he worked on some of the worst cartoons this degraded planet has ever seen.
During the 80’s and 90’s his work has been featured in many publications that deal with comics and culture, from the high-brow Kenyon Review and World Art Magazine to Francis Coppola's Zoetrope, as well as the Frank comics.
JIM was subsequently published as a 32-page magazine by Fantagraphics Books.
Response was good enough to persuade Woodring to leave animation and embark on a career as a full-time cartoon artiste.
At present he is working on his next book, "Seeing Things,"to be published in 2005 by Fantagraphics Books. He lives in Seattle with his family and residual phenomena.

Don't just take our word for it:

Essay on Jim In "Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers," Sean Howe, ed., 2004, Random House Inc.

Interesting profile of Jim on the toy site Strangeco.com
Nice writeup in the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
about Jim, complete with glamour photo and
domestic dirt dished!
Fall 2003 Book Sense 76 Top 10 recommendation for
"The Frank Book"
Seattle Times 7/23/2003
San Francisco Chronicle
Review (in comic strip format by Chris Lanier)
of Yerba Buena Show
New York Times Review of "Mysterio Simpatico"
"Trosper" reviewed in
Educational Digest
Pacific Northwest Magazine article
Frank #4 reviewed at Time.com
Seattle Times article
(Clicking will open a new window.)

Email jim at jimwoodring.com
(Please put that address above in the standard format, using @,
and mail using your own email program. This is a probably futile attempt to stem the tidal wave of spam we get every day, grrr.)
Abuse or encomiums regarding this site may be addressed to
terriblemadamew at jimwoodring.com