Guest Author - Monica Flink
When Will Eisner went to publishers with a manuscript about a particular fictional Bronx tenement drawn out like a comic book, nobody would touch it. Thirty years and a literary revolution later, it is impossible to imagine a world without “A Contract With God,” the very first graphic novel. It is from Eisner’s own pained soul that the world was blessed with authors such as Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, and Neil Gaiman, who are famous names in the genre that Eisner created with four short stories collected together.
Crude, certainly. Heart-rendering? “A Contract With God” fails to leave any reader untouched with the powerful emotions it evokes, as raw as Eisner’s black ink drawings. Set up un four chapters, readers are touched by the lives of characters that could be as real as their own next door neighbors. These vignettes of 1930’s, Depression Era tenement life show the pure, the wicked, the hopeful, and the depraved all living together, trying to live life, and attempting (and failing as many of us do), to pull themselves from the mire of a depressing and pointless existence into something worthwhile.
The first chapter, the eponymous “A Contract With God” is the story of a Jewish immigrant who lives his life to please God. When his adopted daughter dies at the age of sixteen, just as Eisner’s own child did, he casts aside religion in despair, and works instead for the material things said to make the world happy. His downfall comes, ironically, when he finds himself ready to return to Judaism.
Second is a story about “The Street Singer”. A street singer was a popular occupation for those in the Depression Era who had lost jobs and could not find work again. They walked through streets and alleys, singing popular songs in hopes that someone would send money down to them. Some were good enough in their operatic arias that they sounded nearly professional in the echoing tenement alleys. In this story, we read how desperate not only one street singer is, but also a fallen opera dive, and a pregnant woman who all come together in some way and fall apart in one day.
“The Super” is a glimpse into the life of a mean, angry super of the particular Bronx tenement of the entire book, who turns out to be a lonely, human soul trapped in the dark world of desire and morality. On a normal day, his life abruptly ends when his desires finally overwhelm his common sense.
The final story, “Cookalien,” reflects on the choices and lives of several people who learn that deceit natural to all of us can only lead to grief. At the end, only those who are truthful in one way or another end up better off, if not honest. Lives change, sometimes through no fault of the person, and worlds are shaken while others are smoothed over and made pleasant.
These four stories certainly are not the sleek, sophisticated art which the current generation are accustomed to, but they carry a timeless quality that doesn’t come just from being the first real graphic novel. They touch upon the tender, terrible frailty of the human condition and render the soul bare for all to see. Will Eisner used his skills and his soul to write a book, a “graphic novel” that would change the world of literature forever. And that is how it should be.
