Will Eisner’s ‘A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories’
Will Eisner is famous for all manner of things, not least of which is a comic career spanning more decades than most readers will have been alive. But it was with this book, A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories that Eisner is credited by creating adult related novel length comics to a broader audience. America was usually focused on monthly series and newspaper strips. Eisner took the basic elements and created a very unique and influential piece of quality work.
This collection of four stories: A Contract With God, The Street Singer, The Super and Cookalein takes the reader to the Bronx in the 1930s as seen from Eisner’s autobiographical perspective. Each story is about a different character, passed on a real person, with one thing binding them – an overwhelming desire to lift themselves out of the tenements.
The fact that it is not completely about himself seems to bring more seriousness to his work, meaning that there is less time for him to replenish half remembered details but more time for the development of his characters and their dramatic lives.
Another graphic novel created by Will Eisner called To the Heat of the Storm is a stark of great ambitious contrast, because we as readers are left with a feeling that the characters are keen observations rather than two dimensional stereotypes. The tenements themselves provide a heavy, almost gravitational backdrop, drawing Eisner’s cast back into the black holes of poverty and depression no matter how hard they try to leave.
This graphic novel almost does not show its age despite its venerable years with the history of the New York Bronx as important now as it was when this narrative was made.
These short narratives are unique in the medium and rightly deserve the reverence they receive.
Referenced from Andy Shaw, January 30th 2011, www.grovel.org.uk
Left: To the Heart of the Storm front cover.
Will Eisner’s ‘To the Heart of the Storm’
Right: Artwork from the novel
A classic example of how comics can be treated as a more serious subject, To the Heart of the Storm is an autobiographical narrative, which tells a story about a young Jewish boy, growing up in New York City during both world wars.
The memories are pictured flooding back to Eisner as he sits on a train. He is on his way to boot camp having been sent to fight in World War Two. A silent, ruminative Eisner is seen in a thoughtful mood, gazing out of the window, twisting the buildings and people he passes into scene from his past.
Eisner’s black and white style really creates mood and atmosphere of the dream-like nature of his recollections; as an artist I myself also agree with this statement. Eisner also does not use rigid frames to keep the sequential drawings in check; instead he uses drifting smoky effects to take the reader from one memory to the next. His style within his character drawings involves some caricature with their exaggerated facial expression to get the effect he requires, but still keeps other aspects of anatomy maintained with the correct scale and forms; this balances his caricature style with a realistic feel.
To the Heart of the Storm is a fascinating insight into the formative years of the author, especially from his perspective of a Jew in an era when racial tolerance was quite poor. The way, in which the author’s train-travelling alter ego remembers his past to be chaotic, especially scattered, as it is with further dramatized recollections built from the memories of his parents.
‘This probably is one best left to those with a particular interest in the era or the circumstances in which Eisner grew up, as it left us feeling like we wanted more, that too few conclusions had been drawn. Or perhaps that’s just the way life is.’
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