A Life Force

I found this graphic novel stunning, perhaps the best graphic novel I've read (although hard to compare to Maus since I read that twenty years ago). The second volume in "The Contract With God" trilogy, it surpasses the first with a combination of sophisticated near-perfect plotting, excellent artwork, and compelling visual arrangements. Like the stories in the first volume, it is set in the tenements the mythical Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx in the 1930s. Most of the characters are Jewish, but it also features a recent Italian immigrant (plus some mobsters) and a down-on-his-luck WASP.

The story is both original but also feels universal, a series of events that snowball from the Great Depression including a man who is on the verge of show more giving up, a Rabbi that gives him a small project and hope, an Italian immigrant being harassed by the mob, the good fortune of their hooking up with a WASP who was ruined in the crash but has a good idea bout pulling businesses out of bankruptcy--and a whole series of events around this, including a rekindled romance with a German-Jewish refugee--as this cast of characters struggles to make it in America.

This is all drawn in black-and-white, mostly with conventional panels but also some pages of news clippings and other media that create an air of authenticity around the entire book. It is also a relatively quick read. show less

I found this graphic novel stunning, perhaps the best graphic novel I've read (although hard to compare to Maus since I read that twenty years ago). The second volume in "The Contract With God" trilogy, it surpasses the first with a combination of sophisticated near-perfect plotting, excellent artwork, and compelling visual arrangements. Like the stories in the first volume, it is set in the tenements the mythical Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx in the 1930s. Most of the characters are Jewish, but it also features a recent Italian immigrant (plus some mobsters) and a down-on-his-luck WASP.

The story is both original but also feels universal, a series of events that snowball from the Great Depression including a man who is on the verge of show more giving up, a Rabbi that gives him a small project and hope, an Italian immigrant being harassed by the mob, the good fortune of their hooking up with a WASP who was ruined in the crash but has a good idea bout pulling businesses out of bankruptcy--and a whole series of events around this, including a rekindled romance with a German-Jewish refugee--as this cast of characters struggles to make it in America.

This is all drawn in black-and-white, mostly with conventional panels but also some pages of news clippings and other media that create an air of authenticity around the entire book. It is also a relatively quick read. show less

I'd never heard of the writer/artist before, but apparently he is a founder of the graphic novel format. This should be required reading in the midst of the current climate dealing, as it does, with the slide towards economic collapse and fascism albeit in another time. Certainly though this would be considered a lowly cartoon there is great deal more depth than the current narrative we consume so fervently!

Me encantan estas historias de Eisner, pequeños dramas de familias en la ciudad. Muy del estilo de 'Contrato con Dios'

Eight out of ten. CBR format. Chronicles the period between the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism and social politics. Extremely interesting, well written and thought provoking.

A portrait of Jewish life in depression era New York with the rise of Nazism in Europe in the background. Excellent and atmospheric as always.

Touching on the 1930s Great Depression, Nazi persecution of Jews and the growing Communist movement .... and philosophically, the meaning of life of man and cockroach, this was yet another work of art by Eisner.