James William Woodring (born October 11, 1952) is an American cartoonist, fine artist, writer and toy designer.

These stories incorporate a highly personal symbolism largely inspired by Woodring's belief in Vedanta from Hindu philosophy.

He also does a large amount of surrealist painting, and has been the writer on a number of comics from licensed franchises published by Dark Horse and others.

He suffered from hallucinations (which he called "apparitions") of floating, gibbering faces over his bed (among other visions) when he was a child, and "was obsessed with death at a tender age"[2] and was afraid his parents would come into his bedroom and kill him.

I felt that this image had gone to a lot of work to get into the building and get into that room and wait for the screen to turn blank and then appear at me to honk at me to go.

While working at Ruby-Spears he began self-publishing Jim, an anthology of comics, dream art and free-form writing which he described as an "autojournal".

Jim was published as a regular series by Fantagraphics starting in 1986, to critical acclaim if less than spectacular sales, and Woodring became a full-time cartoonist.

This was the place in which his character, Frank, first featured prominently, in stories that "have a dreamlike flow and an internal logic to them"[6] written in a "symbolic visual language"[6] that is "defined by thick, unforgiving cartoon lines that marry Walt Kelly with Salvador Dalí."

[14] In 2010, a 93-minute documentary was released entitled The Lobster and the Liver: The Unique World of Jim Woodring,[15] directed by Jonathan Howells.

As of April 2011, Woodring keeps an infrequently updated blog,[16] where he sometimes posts panels from works-in-progress, including Weathercraft and Congress of the Animals, as well as other projects, such as new paintings and the construction and demonstration of a working seven-foot dip pen.

[16] In October, 2022 woodring released his 400 page comics odyssey entitled One Beautiful Spring Day, featuring eccentric woodcut-style panels with clean black outlines and hatched shadows.

Woodring illustrated Microsoft's Comic Chat program, an IRC client previously packaged with multiple versions of Internet Explorer.

For a time, Woodring was sending his readers free drawings, his "jiva portraits" of what he imagined their souls looked like.

In 1991 and 1992, Woodring illustrated the Harvey Pekar stories Snake, Watching the Media Watchers and Sheiboneth Beis Hamikdosh for American Splendor.

Woodring did the artwork for Dennis Eichhorn's The Meaning of Life in Real Stuff #3, and contributed the cover to issue #8.

Released in November 2013, Woodring created an interpretative story based on artwork from Yo La Tengo's album Fade.

The resultant product is a set of three soft vinyl figurines (sculpted by Tomohiro Yasui) representing the band members; they come with a DVD featuring an animated short (5:20 minutes) called The Tree, featuring music by Yo La Tengo (plus a "bonus comic" from Woodring is included with the rest).

Woodring's strange toy creations have been sold in vending machines in Japan and are available in American comics shops.

Woodring's drawing style in the black-and-white Frank stories has often been mistaken for brushwork due to the greatly varying thickness of the linework typical of brush cartooning, but he has insisted,[note 1] and indeed demonstrated[citation needed], that it is done with a Brause #29 Index Finger dip pen.

"[14] Woodring singles out for praise the cartoon work of Mark Martin, Justin Green, Rachel Bell, John Dorman, Mark Newgarden, Roy Thomkins, Peter Bagge, Terry LaBan, Chester Brown, Seth, Joe Matt, Robert Crumb, Charles Burns, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Lat,[19] Gil Kane and Jack Kirby (Woodring inked and colored Kirby's designs during his time at Ruby-Spears).

"[26] Harry McNaught,[2][19] Boris Artzybasheff,[2] 17th Century Dutch painting,[2] Ingres,[2] Salvador Dalí Woodring has read widely in literature.

Woodring frequently mentions Captain Beefheart, Bill Frisell as musical favorites, but also "schmaltzy, potent, cheap pop music with strings from the late 50s and early 60s, the Theme from A Summer Place, Holiday for Strings, the theme from Midnight Cowboy...that sort of dreck.