A Contract with God by Will Eisner

            A Contract with God is a heavy examination of spirituality by Will Eisner, created through a series of short stories surrounding different characters residing in the same tenement building.  The work examines the faith of both the young and old, and how their experiences  (or their lack thereof) throughout life have shaped their spiritual connection to God.  These stories could have been taken from life: there are not always happy endings, and the bad guy doesn’t always get his just desserts (in fact, by the end of the last story, a man on vacation during the summer rapes a woman he was attempting to seduce under the pretense of her being rich [she wasn’t], leaves her where he raped her, and then proceeds to find another woman with money and seems to successfully wrapped her around his little finger).

            Although each short story gives an intimate look at the lives of each of its central characters, Eisner does allow himself to step back and pose some greater questions: one of the more important ones, presented in the first short story, asks, “Is not all religion a contract between man – and God?”  Given the main character’s actions towards inspiring such a question to be presented, Eisner plays with the different ways people practice their religion and express their spirituality.  Some are more literal and physical, like in the first story and a subsequent story later on, while others are intangible more mutable.

            Something I found appealing about his work in A Contract with God was the fact these characters were not beautified in any way: they could have been anyone, anywhere, in any tenement housing establishment (or to simplify it, any city).  These characters have the potential to be real, thanks to the genuine approach Eisner takes in designing and drawing them, and forcing them to bare all of their emotoins.  The way he plays with the layout of the novel makes it flow almost like a film, from one scene to the next, instead of a comic.  The emotions of each character are clear and concise, and his mastery of wordless expression is evidence for why he is one of the great American comic creators.