Jim Woodring profile on STRANGEco

Here's a profile of the fantastically-talented cartoonist Jim Woodring.

hodagIn 1999, Jim was commissioned to draw a picture of a hodag, a character from American folklore whose pseudo-scientific description is Bovinus spiritualis— a clawed, grinning ox-like creature of fearsome appearance that frequented Wisconsin and eastern parts of the United States. According to Eugene Shephard, the forester who in 1893 got the first prolonged look and whiff of the creature, the hodag had the "head of a bull, the grinning face of a giant man, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with a spear at the end." The beast subsisted on a diet of swamp things, but was known to occasionally snack on wayward lumberjacks and other unfortunates. It was also said to possess "the transmigrated soul of one of Paul Bunyan's oxen," and more obviously, a very obnoxious odor. So obnoxious that it took residents of Oneida County seven years of forest burning to purge the stink.

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