A Contract with God and Other Stories of Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner

Frimme Hersh, a Russian Jew sent to America as his village elders’ last hope of cultural survival, has just buried his adopted daughter. In the title story, however, we’re dropped in the middle of an immigrant version of the Book of Job. Their structure is genuinely tragic: No one gets what he or she “deserves,” but the stories dramatize just resolutions of their conflicts. The other three stories - “The Street Singer,” “The Super,” and “Cookalein” - are full of pathos, dark humor, and a gnawing hunger for love. Out of that came “A Contract With God,” one of the four “tenement tales” of the Depression originally published in 1978 that make up this volume, each set at 55 Dropsie Avenue, a fictional address in the Bronx. But he kept working, even through the years-long grief that followed the death of his teenaged daughter. Every volume in the graphic-novel section at Barnes & Noble owes a debt to the adventures of this masked crime fighter in fedora and trench coat.Įisner had some hard times, especially during the McCarthy era, when guardians of public decency stoked hysteria about any comics title more complex than Archie. Norton then acquired Eisner's catalogue and released A Contract with God, A Life Force, and Dropsie Avenue in a single-volume edition in 2006, and in 2007 released the three books in standalone editions.It is impossible to overstate the scale of Will Eisner’s influence on the world of comics - or, as he called the visual literature he helped pioneer, “sequential art.” Had he abandoned the form after The Spirit‘s 12-year run ended in 1952, he still would have few peers. DC Comics bought the rights to reprint the book and Eisner's other works in 1999 and reprinted Dropsie Avenue as part of its Will Eisner Library in 2000. Kitchen Sink Press published the book in 1995 as the third volume of the Contract with God trilogy. One common plot revolves around 'old' residents bemoaning the arrival of 'newer' residents and frictions caused by it.

The chronicles tell about life, problems, and solutions about inter-ethnic and other socioeconomic relations of residents of Dropsie Avenue in New York City.

In the form of chronicles, most tales only last few pages, however there are multiple core characters whose stories are spread throughout.

There is an overarching plot but no clear single arc except that of the life-cycle of a neighbourhood, its deterioration and renewal. After A Contract with God (1978) and A Life Force (1988), it is the third volume in the Contract with God trilogy. Dropsie Avenue is a 1995 graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner.

A Contract with God and Other Stories of Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner