Once upon a time—long
before the term “graphic novel” was coined—novels written for adults and
young adults came with pictures. It began with Dickens’ Pickwick Papers (1836), whose illustrations did much to popularize
the book. Thereafter, all of Dickens’ novels were illustrated, as were those of
Sir Walter Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Victor Hugo, and Jules
Verne, just to name a few. A novel—at least, an adventure novel—without
pictures was something incomplete. Artists used engraving, etching,
lithography, mezzotint, and a variety of other processes to create
illustrations that complemented the text.
This golden
age lasted for about a hundred years. Toward the end of it, two great American
illustrators dominated the field: Howard Pyle (d. 1911), who illustrated The
Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and Men
of Iron, and his student, N. C. Wyeth (d. 1945), whose illustrations
for Treasure Island must still be
impressed on every boy’s imagination.
What put an
end to this grand tradition? Possibly competition from the movies, or the
invention of the modern comic book; certainly, the economics of the publishing
industry.
Time, we say,
to bring it back! “We” being me, and my illustrator, Anthony Macbain,
and our very enlightened publisher, Kristina Blank Makansi of Blank Slate Press. Odin’s Child has five
full-page illustrations, and we are planning for more of them in The Ice Queen and The Guardsman.
We hope
readers will approve. And—who knows?—we may be helping to bring back an old and
honored custom.
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