Close Cousins or Distant Family?

In the Afterword to George Walker’s Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri, Laurence Hyde (Firefly Books, 2007), Seth suggests that although the wordless novels which began to gain notoriety at the beginning of the 20^th century are now being hailed as close cousins to the graphic novel, there are important fundamental differences between the two forms.

Seth maintains that the wordless novel pays homage more to silent film than to the comic strip. In spite of their widespread popularity, many readers would have considered comic strips of the day simplistic—as is still the case today. Silent film, however, was in its heyday as an emerging and sophisticated art form. If the artists creating wordless novels had felt that comic strips were an elevated art form, why would they not have included speech balloons and more than one…