Pim and Francie by Al Columbia

Pim and Francie: The Golden Bear Days {Artifacts and Bone Fragments} first edition, first printing, Fantagraphics press, September 2009, Mint copy in decorative hardcover boards, Al Columbia’s stunning and unique first book, new. [k2rbr]

“Columbia’s legend over the last two decades has as much to do with the work he’s destroyed or never finished as with the few spectacular, horrifying pieces that actually have seen publication. This, his first book, makes a point of being unfinished and unfinishable. These aren’t actually stories about Pim and Francie, a pair of little-kid characters (drawn in a vintage animation style) who are perpetually stumbling into ghastly, wrenchingly violent scenarios: they’re mangled fragments of stories, closeups of incomplete comics pages and animation storyboards, stained and crumpled sketches and notes. The book’s spine calls its contents artifacts and bone fragments, as if they’re what’s left for a forensic scientist to identify after a brutal murderer has had his way with them; Columbia obsessively returns to images of bloody bloody killers. (His cartoon shorthand for destruction is a human tornado with lots of bent arms holding knives at daffy angles.) Many of the pieces are just one or two drawings, as if they’ve been reduced to the moment when an idyllic piece of entertainment goes hideously awry. But they’re also showcases for Columbia’s self-frustrating mastery: his absolute command of the idiom of lush, old-fashioned cartooning, and the unshakable eeriness of his visions of horror.”
—Publishers Weekly

Collecting more than a decade’s worth of excavations, comic strips, animation stills, storybook covers, and much more, this broken jigsaw puzzle of a graphic novel tells the story of Pim & Francie ― childlike male and female imps ― whose irresponsible antics get them into horrific, fantastic trouble. The brilliant, fairy tale-like backdrops hint at further layers of reality lurking under every gingerbread house or behind every sunny afternoon. Their loosely defined relationship only contributes to the existential fear that lingers underneath the various perils they are subjected to, which are threaded together by text and notes by the artist.

$ 190.00