Graphic Novels

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Sanctuary, The Ivory Tower Above The Fray.  An Artist Is One Of The Residents.  1939.
This is by Lynd Kendall Ward, just one of the best.  I was given a copy of Kidnapped that he illustrated c.1965, and I still have it and I still love it.  Lynd published the first graphic novel in English in 1929, Gods' Man.  You will notice that the apostrophe is placed to indicate plurality and not possession.


He was influenced by Otto Nuckel, who put out Destiny.  Woodcut from Gods' Man, 1929.  I have no fucking idea whatsoever about what is happening here.  I cannot buy comics and these things are never in libraries.


Gods' Man.


Gods' Man.  Could this be a reference to the Serpent in the Garden?


Destiny, Otto Nuckel, 1926   He was influenced by the Flemish artist Frans Masereel with his graphic novel Passionate Journey, 1919.


Destiny.


 Destiny.


Frans Masereel, Passionate Journey.


Salute!  Passionate Journey.

Passionate Journey.  All three of these books I have mentioned are wordless.


This leads us to Will Eisner, who popularized the graphic novel in the U. S.  This is from A Contract With God, his first of the genre.  Will is my favorite artist.  He is unsurpassed in the sequential story telling medium.  Say again, there is no one better.


A Contract With God.


The Spirt.  I started reading this in reprint as a teenager.  This was a newspaper comic, subject to page limitations and deadlines.  It ran from 1940 to 1952, and Eisner quit when it began to lose it's punch.  To this day it remains the most innovative and well written adventure strip ever put out in a daily, or anywhere else.  Every single Sunday installment started with these incredibly imaginative and intricate splash panels. The Spirit was cinematic in approach.  He had the assistance of Jules Feiffer, Jack Cole, Lou Fine and Wally Wood, an all star line-up if there ever was one.  Cole and Fine did the art when Eisner was serving in WWII.  There were several others who worked on the strip that I am not familiar with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(comics)


I tend to overuse superlatives.  But this is pretty good, I think you'll agree!  The Spirit was a comic book insert for Sunday papers, and had a combined circulation of 5 million during the 40's.  It ran for 635 issues.  It is no accident that comic art's highest honor is the Eisner award.  And, bye the bye, I hate the term "graphic novel".  They are comics no matter how they are bound and marketed.


You do not make deals with God.


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