FRANK BOOK, THE 225
Subsequent stories, which this volume presents more or less chronologically by
publication date, continue to expand the cast of characters, both friends and foes to
Frank. In “Frank Acquires Pupshaw,” a downtrodden Frank, bereft of a mantelpiece
ornament, comes across a yard sale where he adopts his pet and steadfast protector
Pupshaw, who later spews out mini-Pupshaws that skeletonize the thieving Manhog.
Two of Frank’s greatest adversaries join the resurrected Manhog in “Frank’s Faux Pa”:
Frank’s counterfeit father (hence the title) and the diabolical brain-looter Whim, the
inventor of the Whim-Grinder, a hand-held device that deforms Frank’s head and
alters his personality and perception. Other prominent acquaintances include Frank’s
“Real Pa,” identical in appearance to his fake one; Lucky, Whim’s long-faced lackey;
the geometrical Jerry Chickens, alternately sources and targets of mayhem; and Pup-
shaw’s anagrammatic suitor Pushpaw, who literally transforms the landscape in the
formally inventive story with his name. Th e transgressive, shape-shifting tricksters in
this entourage—Pupshaw, Pushpaw, and Whim—help to lend the stories their arche-
typal aspect. Th e Frank characters encounter a procession of strange entities, some
from other dimensions or straddling the material and spiritual worlds, such as the
radially symmetrical Jivas, immortal essences of once-living beings that resemble elab-
orately patterned spinning tops. Woodring includes elliptical explanations of many
of the denizens of Frank’s vividly realized and animated world, the Unifactor, in the
book’s appendix.
Of course, the protagonist of Frank provides Th e Frank Book with its main source
of continuity and meaning, however elusive the latter may be. According to Woodring,
readers have determined that Frank “is 11 years old, that he is covered with short, dense
fur like a mole’s, that he is innocent but not noble, and that he is mortal and must
some day die” (351). Frank habitually wanders the meadows, forests, and coasts of the
Unifactor in a quest for amusement, which he encounters in the form of, for instance, a
party for the dead, a palace of horrors that pales in comparison to the world outside, and
wells that cause unexpected transformations. Paradoxically, Frank is capable of extreme
cruelty but can also show unusual compassion, even to his eternal antagonist Manhog.
Frank repeatedly wants what he cannot have and goes to great lengths to obtain it, often
at his peril, but he doesn’t learn from his experiences. Unlike his cartoon predecessors,
Frank doesn’t always triumph; in fact, he often has to be rescued by others and is left on
the brink of death after being chewed up and spit out of another dimension at the end
of Th e Frank Book , subverting readers’ expectations. Indeed, an essay that Woodring has
endorsed describes Frank as a radical exploration and critique of cartoons that takes
their conventions to sometimes horrifying extremes.
Yet Frank ’s visual non sequiturs, unpredictable characters, and internal logic also
create a self-contained, self-referential realm that frequently defi es reason. Woodring
claims that all the Frank stories have straightforward meanings, which he usually
recognizes only after they are completed, but Woodring prefers to keep these meanings
to himself “because the stories are more powerful when their mysteries are undiscov-
ered” (351). In his Comics Journal Special interview, Woodring suggests that readers have
