Gods' Man is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985) published in 1929. In 139 captionless woodblock prints, it tells the Faustian story of an artist who signs away his soul for a magic paintbrush. Gods' Man was the first American wordless novel, and is considered a precursor of the graphic novel, whose development it influenced.
Cover to the first edition of Gods' Man (1929) by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985).
The book's unnamed protagonist framed by wineglasses, emphasizing the isolation he feels.
Ward read Frans Masereel's wordless novel The Sun (1919, pictured) while he was studying in Germany.
Cartoonist Milt Gross parodied Gods' Man in He Done Her Wrong (1930).
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are also used. The genre flourished primarily in the 1920s and 1930s and was most popular in Germany.
Wordless novels flourished in Germany in the 1920s and typically were made using woodcut or similar techniques in an Expressionist style. (Frans Masereel, 25 Images of a Man's Passion, 1918)
Expressionist film and graphics inspired early wordless novels. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920)
Wordless novelists favoured relief printing such as in this wood engraving from Ward's Prelude to a Million Years (1933).
In He Done Her Wrong (1930), Milt Gross parodied Lynd Ward's Gods' Man (1929).
