In 1968, a 14-year-old Jim Woodring visited a surrealism retrospective at the Los Angeles County Art Museum, and the experience planted the seed for his eventual entrance into the world of comics. Woodring began his career in 1980, when he took a job at Ruby Spears animation studio and created storyboards for the less than groundbreaking cartoons, Mr.T and Rubic the Amazing Cube. Woodring ultimately fled the corporate cartoon scene, and with tidy paycheck in tow, devoted himself full time to creating his own brand of comics. Since the mid '80s, Woodring has amassed a significant following due to the wordless comics "Jim" and "Frank." The latter has become his real calling card, a comic that features cute hybrid animals set in surreal, nightmarish settings.

In his latest effort, Tropser, Woodring delivers 18 of his trademark, watercolor illustrations, bound together in a Golden Books format. The picture book details the trials and tribulations of Tropser, a soft-bodied, odd sort of pachyderm. The story follows Trosper as he gleefully plays with a colorful ball, until menacing forces are revealed in the background, which are bent on interrupting the lovable sot's playtime reverie. Trosper is ultimately chased through a series of funhouse rooms until he finds a safe place to once again enjoy his beloved toy.

In the spirit of innovation, Woodring added an unusual component to the book. For Tropser, he enlisted the help of noted jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, who contributes a six-minute soundtrack to accompany Woodring's innocuous tale.

While the concept of combining a visual component with a soundscape is interesting, the reality of the experience provided by Woodring and Frisell falls short of compelling. Frisell's soundtrack is a spacey, but bland deluge into soft jazz guitar that fails to establish a succinct mood or even establish a pace for perusing the pages of illustrations. In fact, one can easily look over the illustrations and capture the story quickly, with minutes of the soundtrack left to play after gleaning the fate of Trosper. Woodring and Frisell's components come across as two different entities that are packages together, but do not gel with one another. Additionally defeating to the success of the project is the fact that Trosper is not one of Woodring's most intriguing or substantive tales. The already slim volume of 18 pages is a stretch (and an expensive one at that) for a story that could easily be taken care of in a mere six.