But do they belong on the walls of an art museum? “LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel’’ at the Fitchburg Art Museum presents scores of original pages from graphic novels dating back to 1929. The show, organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, is by turns enticing and frustrating.
There’s no question the illustrations - by the likes of Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Stan Lee, and Sue Coe - are art. They’re crackling and lean, witty compositions that push narrative along like steam in a steam engine and capture character. But a graphic novel should be experienced like any novel, held in the hands. To see portions mounted on the wall - well, it’s unfair. You’re a viewer, not a reader. There’s no getting deliciously lost in a story when you’re offered mere snippets of it.
It’s difficult to chart the history of this form, which has historical precedents in the 18th-century satires of William Hogarth, the Swiss artist Rodolphe Töpffer’s captioned illustrations in his 1830s book “Histoire de M. Vieux Bois,’’ and late 19th-century comic strips such as Richard F. Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid.’’
These influences coalesce in a granddaddy of 20th-century American graphic novels: Lynd Ward’s 1929 book of woodblock prints, “God’s Man,’’ a nearly wordless narrative featuring 139 illustrations, a few dozen of which are on view. Ward tells a morality tale of the compromises a young artist makes in small, dense panels that are at once operatic and crisp. He conveys the story in a brilliant chiaroscuro that highlights the balance of good and evil with which the hero grapples.
Eisner was a 20th-century icon of comics. “LitGraphic’’ dips into his early comic books, such as “The Spirit,’’ a film-noir style serial from the 1940s. Some pages from “Baxter’s Perfect Crime,’’ a 1947 issue, are trippy, stuffed with noir-ish conceits (such as a mouthy moll) that read today like pure spoof. But the illustrations, and the way Eisner moved the reader from panel to panel - he used close-ups and long shots like a film director - set precedents.
