Customer Reviews

The Contract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue (A Contract With God, A Life Force, Dropsie Avenue)

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This book collects three graphic novels by Will Eisner, one of the masters of the comic book format. The original "A Contract With God" book is often considered to be the first real graphic novel. It features four short stories about people who lived at 55 Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx during the Great Depression. The title story is about a devout Jew who loses his faith in God when his daughter dies. The other stories are about a street singer, the building superintendant and vacationers in the Catskills. Eisner returned to 55 Dropsie Avenue with "A Life Force", which is a longer story telling the interlocking stories of the building's residents. The final story here is "Dropsie Avenue (The Neighborhood)", which is an extended story about the history of Dropsie Avenue from 1870 to the present. All the stories are absolutely wonderful "slice of life" tales about "normal" people. The Contract With God Trilogy is a mesmerizing, fictional chronicle of a universal American experience as well as Eisner's most poignant and enduring literary legacy.

I tend to think the "Great American Novel" will never be written. But if there can be a Great American Graphic Novel, this may well be it.

This is basically a set of stories about life in a inner-city tenement, mostly set during the Depression, but with the final volume of the trilogy covering the building's entire history. It is a simple enthralling story.

This is not, of course, your typical comic book. It even far exceeds the standards of the best graphic novels. And there are no superheroes, no giant robots, none of the standard trappings of the form. Its just stories about life, many very poignant.

And Eisner's art is simply beautiful. Jack Kirby is called the King of Comics, and I don't dispute him that title. But if Kirby is "The King", then Will Wisner is the all-powerful, wise and benevolent Emperor of a tiny little land. His work certainly isn't as well-known to the public, even among comic fans, but the art is simply amazing.

To be fair, I found the middle chapter ("A Life Force") somewhat dull. But that's only because its less interesting than the other two -- its still makes for entertaining reading.

If there's one real criticism I have of the book, its that its printed with a brown ink, almost sepia tone in color. While I'd presume that was done to create a period feel for it, I would have preferred black ink.

Comic and cartoon artists are finally getting the respect they have deserved since the Yellow Kid wore his one piece pajama. Artists like Charles Burns and Frank Miller; Seth and Tony Millionaire, all work in a medium whose fan base is basically adult, literate and mainstream. In reading current book reviews of works like "Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth" by Chris Ware or "Blankets" by Craig Thompson, it is clear that the Graphic Novel as an art form no longer requires an asterisk.

All these artists and cartoonists owe this new environment of respect in no small part to the work of Will Eisner, specifically the work contained in this volume. While Eisner was not the first artist to tell a story with pictures, he without question hammered out a stylistic language that others could learn and understand. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that he brought the concept of the graphic novel home and gave it a firm structure and a future. Also important was Eisner's unyielding believe in the graphic novel as a form of fine art, as legitimate a tool for storytelling as any of the traditional oral or written forms. All current artists working in comics owe Eisner in the same way that all Afro-American ballplayers owe a debt of gratitude to Jackie Robinson. Like Robinson, Eisner completely believed in what he was doing and refused to accept anything less than respect for his work, all done in a day when respect didn't come easily or automatically for them.

Now, about the work itself - what can one say? No one will ever replace or improve on Eisner's innate ability to tell a story with pictures. His work was absolutely gorgeous and fluid, the line and brushwork immaculate and dense without every looking fussy. He forged a unique and instantly recognizable style that is the true mark of a virtuoso in any artistic medium, and he was a very gifted storyteller into the bargain. There are certain panels in his best work, like "A Life Force" or "Droopsie Avenue," that are just jaw dropping in their beauty and absolutely unforgettable.

To this day his work is unmatched in its depth and sophistication of theme. Norton deserves much praise for reissueing these trailblazing works in a well bound and attractive hardcover. Recommended highly. -Mykal Banta

Will Eisner is like Cervantes, Griffith and John Ford. The Contract With God graphic novel is his masterpiece. This is the Don Quixote of Comics. Truly art. Period.

This graphic novel clearly represents the genius that was Will Eisner. The >500 pages is an artistic wonder as Mr. Eisner tells us the story of one street in New York City, and of one building, in particular. We first see the Dutch, angry that the English are moving in. Then the English are angry that the Irish are moving in, then come the Jews, Italians, African Americans, Hispanics, etc. Through it all, we meet good people, utterly despicable people, and every bit in between. I found a lot about this book difficult and sad -- but the drawings and the presentation of NYC, especially during the Great Depression, were so good.

Seems to me that the great genius and timeless vigor
of Will Eisner draws a deadly parallel to another
artistic giant, the fabulous Duke Ellington. Like
the young Ellington, the young Eisner helped usher
in the finest qualities of an entire expressive
idiom at its roots. As did Ellington, Eisner
conceived some of his most creative work decades
after his most acclaimed masterpieces. Most of
all, like Ellington, Eisner's vision continues
to set precedents for future generations, well
after the innovator himself has passed on.

Eisner established much of the groundwork for
Sequential literature in the 1930s and the
1940s, long before anyone ever thought of the
term "graphic novel". With THE SPIRIT, Eisner
laid a firm foundation for the field of Comix
as a literary field. While a handful of folk
such as PRINCE VALIANT's Harold Foster brought
this perspective to bear in landmark work,
Eisner was the one who stepped it up to
directly challenge the notion that Comix
couldn't tackle any subject at any proper
time and place.

The trilogy compiled by W.W. Norton represents
the work which ignited the entire field with
its daring topics, bold execution, and emotional
richness. Well into his "retirement" years by
the late 1970s, Eisner set himself to the telling
of more personal stories which reflected the broad
spectrum of human endeavor. Utilizng his own Jewish
heritage and memories of his youth in New York
City, the good, the bad, and the shades of grey
which often define the balance of each, are all
in play here. Striking with the aggressive jolt
of a 1930s-40s Warner Bros. film, these stories
bear a polyidiomatic pertinence which will not
be constrained by any one time period, or ethnic
persuasion.

Those who clamor for Comix with a different
feel can start here. Shy love, lustful
longing, thwarted dreams, mixed romance,
urban renewal, political maneuevering and,
somewhere in all this and more, a deep
integrity often at odds with what one
thinks must be done, are all
present.
Life and death are just the first notes
in the sagas at hand. Race, religion and
more enter a grim cycle of bitter conflict
at odds with the finer measures of tolerance
and compassion.
Lessons learned are easy prey to social
amnesia, leaving communities ripe for
the fall, unless the lesson is learned
anew... and held dear.
Characterizations, which defy the
"set-in-stone" personas many
still associate with this field,
set the tone and pace for all
which transpires in these
bountiful pages.

From this work, one can see the seed
which has taken root in the fertile
imaginations of genre-spanning wonders
across the decades; among them Michael
Chabon and Art Spiegelman, Harlan
Ellison and Darwyn Cooke, Neil
Gaiman and Frank Miller. It's no
wonder that A CONTRACT WITH GOD, A
LIFE FORCE and DROPSIE AVENUE continues
to influence and invigorate with a
spirited force all its own.

THE CONTRACT WITH GOD TRILOGY represents
a mammoth undertaking by W.W.Norton to
present the bulwark of Eisner's
post-SPIRIT work.

Make this work part of your library.
This is reading which is as vital as it
is absorbing.

Its images come straight from the soul.

Eisner's "Contract with God" is said to be the first graphic novel to go by that name. Of course, Eisner spent years failing to find a publisher for this incredible work. Well, Einstein didn't always have it easy, either.

The first work in this book, "Contract with God," defines drawing with word as a medium beyond either drawing or word. It lies within a cartoony style like Walt Kelly's, one that's no longer in vogue, but still strong within its bounds. These aren't happy-ending stories, though. That first story has at least three endings (Rachel's death, Frimme's conversion, and Frimme's demise), none of which are happy. Then comes "The Street Singer," with its clearly unhappy ending. Then comes "The Super," with its clearly anti-happy ending - but one that is just too horribly easy to believe. And that just gets us 1/4 way into the book, or less.

Eisner takes on all the ugly issues: racism/religionism in a bunch of forms, including the forms done right. For example, when Mama goes into a rage at the idea of little black Ruby eating her supper away from everyone else. "Our friends eat at our table," a radical and polarizing thing to say back then, and maybe more surprising to Ruby than to anyone. Some of his characters, especially Abie Gold, keep crossing the line in both directions.

There is a vicious and comforting honesty in Eisner's work that no one today can recapture. In the 1930s and `40s, he turned the microscope onto the Reich to expose its effects on the little, tiny people that most of us are. He kept doing that through WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam, and through successive generations of immigrants and emmigrants.

Eisner's work is beyond definition, by itself. Each piece is too rich, and too deeply interlaced with the time in which it arose. This collection defies easy answers. As art, I rank it as middling daily-strip level. As a record of modern America, it has equals at best. No one surpasses Eisner's vision of who we Americans are, not in any medium.

//wiredweird

I'm a relative latecomer to the world of the graphic novel, though I did read my share of comic books as a kid. But a year or so ago, I read Will Eisner's "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and have been talking about it ever since. Time, I thought, to see what else Eisner might have written.

"What else Eisner might have written" is answered in part by this wonderful reminiscence of the Bronx of days gone by. The tales revolve around the history and residents of a tenement block on 55 Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx. To Eisner, it was always a neighborhood - greater than the sum of its parts and capable of moving callous men to teary nostalgia.

The book starts of with "A Contract with God," a relatively short and focused story about Frimm Hersch, a young Jewish boy who escapes Russian anti-Semitic pogroms, makes a contract with a just God, and loses his faith when his beloved daughter dies. Eisner tells us in the introduction that this story is one of the ways he dealt with his own daughter's death, a blow so severe that he plunged it deep into his psyche. What is so intriguing about Eisner's tale is that the reader never quite finds out what was in the contract. But one finds out a little about God and a bit about humanity's willingness to continue to struggle with this Witness to human misery and loneliness.
"A Contract with God" continues with other New York tales drawn from Eisner's memory - a tale about a lonely former opera diva who befriends a penniless street singer; a bitter tenement "super" infatuated with a young girl; a summer "cookalein" or cook-your-own boarding house at an upstate farm where city moms take their kids for a summer in the out-of-doors. Eisner is at his most frank here, not shying away from the pressures and temptations that entice people living in such close proximity to each other. The tales are sexy, brash, violent and always real.

The second story, "A Life Force," is a meditation on the unseen drive of all living things to remain alive and to reproduce. An out-of-work Depression-era carpenter finds a lesson in a cockroach's struggle to survive. His path crosses that of an ancient "rebbe" needs a room built for whose wife, who suffers from dementia. Soon, the story draws in a ne'er-do-well former playboy boy, young socialists, Sicilians gangsters and a woman from Nazi Germany (an old acquaintance of the carpenter) trying to extract her family from the growing turmoil back home. Eisner's depiction of the ever-triumphant "life force" comes alive in a myriad ways that look surprisingly like ordinary living.

The final section deals with the history of the parcel that became Dropsie Avenue. Eisner takes us on a kaleidoscopic tour from its days as Dutch farmland through its many incarnations as a residential neighborhood, vibrant gathering place for immigrant families, rat hole and locale for single-family homes. His tale is populated with crooked real estate developers, local politicians, druggies, thieves, ethnic priests, ineffectual cops and a variety of local characters. Eisner is at his best as he shows how greed and bad housing laws can strip the poor of housing, enrich the unscrupulous and reduce once-proud neighborhoods to rubble. I learned more about the roots of urban blight from Eisner's pictures than from any "serious" book.

Eisner's work is not disposable, like the comics of my youth. His stories have a depth of humanity that makes them fascinating and re-readable. His art exaggerates enough to telegraph his characters' inner feelings, but subtle enough to keep them rooted in reality. A wonderful experience.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Will Eisner really makes you feel for the characters in his book. There are multiple storys in this book, but it is hard to decide which is my favorite. Even if you are not a huge fan of comic books you will like this book. The storys all take place in the depression era New York on Dropsie Ave. Bottom line is this book is well worth the read.

Republished now in a single volume nearly three decades after their creation, the three books that make up The Contract with God Trilogy--A Contract with God, A Life Force and Dropsie Avenue--retain much of their power. Will Eisner shows that the concept of the graphic novel (which he helped create) can be the medium for realistic, moving stories.

In fact, Eisner is much better when he focuses almost entirely on his stark, black & white artwork to tell his stories. A Life Force suffers somewhat from an overabundance of text taken mainly from newspaper stories of the time. It breaks up the flow of the very human stories he tells. In this sense, A Contract with God is the most powerful of the three books here: unflinchingly honest and emotional. Dropsie Avenue is a clever conceit that works very well--tracing the history of a single neighborhood--but suffers a bit when compared to the title story.

Granted, these stories are period pieces and sometimes a bit difficult to follow with their plethora of characters and overlapping plots. Still, they are worth the effort, bringing to life a (mainly) depression-era society that is becoming harder and harder for many of us to picture. Thus, the benefit of a presentation like Eisner's. Certainly, anyone who feels that art can be used to tell a story as well as words will find plenty of supporting material in this volume. It is definitely worth reading.