5 out of 5

I was disappointed when I first received ‘Problematic.’  First it was the format – a smaller than comic-sized hardcover that can’t be opened fully (lest the spine lose cohesion), and the drawings inside – though 500+, probably – thickly penciled / inked, but not, on the whole, the overall detailed affairs that I witness in Woodring’s comics.

But sitting down with it, later, and actually starting from page 1, there’s a little intro from Jim that put me in the right mindset – this isn’t an artbook, it’s a sketchbook, and Fantagraphics has done a really loving, pure publication of Jim’s efforts.  When I calmed down and more patiently perused it page by page, instead of saying ‘feh’ to the lack of Woodring symbolism, I instead marveled at the themes and concepts that bubble through his head, as well as the glimpse at how he structures his world.  There IS plenty of Woodring stuff in here, but it’s mixed with some more realistic character sketches (a couple of Bill Frissell in studio, it looks like, for example), and then some really fascinating page by page sketches of different creatures, some of which populate the ‘Frank’ world, some which don’t.  Again, the patterns are fascinating as fuck – the theme of characters carrying babies, how all of the straight-on shots of characters lean to the left, and then the ‘deconstruction’ style pages of starting with a regular face or shape and shifting it around or subtracting space.

The note from Woodring talks about how he’d struggled with sketchbooks, always wanting to make them too professional (matching what I thought I’d be looking at initially – more of an artbook than a sketch), until he found these under-sized, gray-paged moleskin books that need to be held in hand, that don’t take to whiteout, that almost force you to just stay rough and not finish it, and it unleashed his sketchiness.  Fanta has upsized the art by 40% or so, but the grey look of the pages is there, and true to his word, Jim didn’t erase much of the underlying pencil work (where there are inks), so you can see his roughing of just general shapes and flow, which is amazing, then, when he can wring these really specific figures from it after the fact.

So – as a coffee table art book, sure, it won’t grab too much attention, perhaps.  But that’s not it is.  It’s true to it’s title – this is a sketchbook.  Woodring fans should love this glimpse into Jim’s creative workings, and though the hardcover packaging is still a little clumsy, it adds to the feeling Jim describes of not being able to just set the book out, pages open, and slaver over it – you’re compelled to hold it in hand, itching to flip through.  This is the first art book I’ve purchased that I felt rewarded for purchasing, and I can only hope it enriches the way I ‘read’ art books in the future.