Will Eisner’s Contract with Comics
Keywords:
Will Eisner, graphic novel, American Jewish comics, immigration narrativeAbstract
The paper deals with formal innovations in A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner, one of the forefathers of modern American comics. Eisner realized that comics had much greater potential and started experimenting with its form and content. He wanted to free comics of the superhero label and create artistically more complex works. When he published A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, it was advertised as “a graphic novel”. Since then the term has been widely used by publishers, critics and writers, even though not all of them agree on its definition. Moreover, as the title suggests Eisner’s book is not a novel but a collection of short stories written in the form of American Jewish immigration narrative, combining autobiography, memoirs and fiction. In this graphic novel Eisner not only revived the immigration narratives in a new medium, but also crossed the boundaries of American comics by presenting a vital and original form that influenced following generations of artists.
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