Gods' Man; Madman's Drum; Wild Pilgrimage by Lynd Ward, edited by Art Spiegelman, 833 pages
I hadn’t heard of Lynd Ward’s work before reading McCloud’s
Understanding Comics last month. I took printmaking classes in college, had an art history prof who specialized in German Expressionism, and am a pretty avid reader of comics - perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit, but how in the world did I go so long without hearing Lynd Ward’s name?! Baffling. The two volume Library of America reprintings of Ward’s six woodcut novels are fairly recent (2010) and I suspect (?) it was difficult to locate copies of these works prior to the reprints. His children’s book illustrations (
Johnny Tremain, The Biggest Bear, etc.) are easy to find, but I was totally unaware of his adult proto-graphic-novels. I hope these reprints mark a resurgence in Ward’s popularity and renown.
Art Spiegelman’s introduction is a wonderful addition to the works; he provides a context for Ward’s art in the history of literature, cinema, comics and visual art. Ward’s own essays at the end of the volume reflect the ethos of the era in which he worked. The paring of Spiegelman’s and Ward’s critical essays bookend the three wordless volumes nicely. In his intro, Spiegelman writes, “Wordless novels are
filled with language, it just resides in the reader’s head rather than on the page.”
Gods’ Man was originally published the same week that the stock market crashed in 1929. Its plot follows a struggling artist and the consequences after he strikes a Faustian bargain with a mysterious hooded figure.
Madman’s Drum follows the life of a slave trader’s son and the events that cause him to lose faith in every major cultural institution (including religion, love, family, law).
Wild Pilgrimage depicts the outer and inner life of a man trapped in an industrial world and his attempts to return to nature. I found the storytelling in all three novels to be fairly heavy handed (in
Gods’ Man the decadence of the roaring 20s is at one point depicted by a woman who is literally branded with a dollar sign), but the lack of subtlety did little to deter my enjoyment of Ward’s prints. I’m looking forward to reading Volume II, which contains Ward’s other three proto-graphic-novels.
This is not a self-help book, I promise. This is a collection of short graphic stories, ranging from dark to humorous to inspirational to just weird. Here are some favorite moments. In one series of 6 panels, a woman goes down to the river every clear day, and yells her love across to someone on the other side. She never sees the face of her loved one or even hears the reply- but she keeps going. In another, there is an "emotion room"- a place where you can safely release all emotions "black and stinking; they glisten like oil slicks"- and once they are safely released, you can exit and eat orange slices. Another great one shows a man looking inside a cut and seeing "a small mortal man he'd carefully hidden inside his own good, strong body." 
