Booklist Review

In between the world wars, a handful of leftist artists in western Europe and the U.S. created book-length stories in one-per-page pictures that they called novels. Inspired by silent films, they dispensed with words except on signs and in headlines. Comics historian Berona accords them the kind of careful (though sporadically ungrammatical) commentary earlier writers about them haven't, even to accompany the reprintings some of their books have received. He summarizes plots clearly and says ocularly verifiable things about visual manners and styles, so that, for instance, we see the differences between the Belgian Frans Masereel's woodcuts, the American Lynd Ward's wood engravings, and the German Otto Nuckel's lead cuts, and appreciate, say, how different widths and orientations of lines serve the moods of the narratives. Besides the printmakers responsible for most wordless novels, Berona discusses the picture novels of pen-and-brush wielders, including American Jewish humorist Milt Gross, whose recently restored slapstick-comic He Done Her Wrong is as respectfully, insightfully treated as the mostly much more somber works of Masereel, Ward, and the others.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2008 Booklist