Ever since I was introduced to peacay's fantabulous BibliOdyssey I've wanted to do my own gallery thing. Well, due to fortuitous circumstances (to wit: a gift from my good friend M. Thibodeau and the source of these wondrous images) today's Hokum is a reasonable approximation.
This is a small selection of woodcuts by Lynd Kendall Ward (26 June 1905 – 28 June 1985) from his "novel in woodcuts" Mad Man's Drum, published in 1930 by Jonathan Cape Harrison Smith. Ward is known primarily for his stark wordless morality tales with hues of social conscience and Methodist justice, early precursors to today's graphic novels. I haven't yet had the chance to thoroughly "read" the book, but near as I can figure it's about a white man, possibly a slave trader, who kills an African man for his drum, and the disasters which befall him and others back home as a consequence.
What really strikes me about Ward's work is how reminiscent they are of the expressionistic cinema of his day: Mad Man's Drum is essentially a silent horror film in the vein of F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.
The complete Mad Man's Drum can be found online here, at a lower resolution. Lynd Ward's other woodcut novels are:
God's Man (1929)
Wild Pilgrimage (1932)
Prelude to a Million Years (1933)
Song Without Words (1936)
Vertigo (1937)
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