Beronä Explores the Roots of the Graphic Novel

Last week David A. Beronä, leading scholar of wordless comics (and a Schulz Library advisor!), published a post on Comics Forum, which is run by the folks behind the academic conference of the same name. In this piece he outlines the deep kinship between early woodcut novels and modern-day literary comics– illustrating the point with an example from Berlin by CCS faculty member Jason Lutes. How could we resist?

Check it out here.

If you’re curious for more, Beronä is a historian of the woodcut novel and wordless comics. Among other works, he’s the author of Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels (Abrams, 2008)—with editions in French and Korean, a winner at the New York Book Show, and a Harvey Awards nominee. He regularly lectures as visiting faculty at CCS, and is the Dean of the Library and Academic Support Services at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

Comics Forum is the academic conference attached to Thought Bubble, an annual comics festival in Leeds, England. If you’ve been to the show, let us know what you thought of it!