A Contract with God

A Contract with God by Will Eisner is a collection of short stories including "A Contract With God", "The Super", "The Street Singer", and "Cookalein". Each story has to do with different residents of a tenement in New York City. The first story, "A Contract With God", is about a man who looses his adopted daughter and creates an apartment empire. The next Story, "The Super", is about the super in a tenement who is hated by the residents and he ends up killing himself. "The Street Singer" is about a street singer who is also a drunk he ends up getting a gig but can't remember where it was because he was drunk. The last story, "Cookalein" is about a family who goes to the country for the summer and how everyone is cheating on each other and their sexual lives.

One of the most interesting parts of this graphic novel was how the panels are set up. Eisner doesn't stick with the normal layout of panels used by many comic artists of the day. Many pages are single panels but instead of out lining them he leaves the edges open making them feel less condensed. He can make big panels and use white space because he doesn't have to fit his entire story into one comic strip, he has an entire novel to tell his story.

I enjoy how expressive his characters bodies are portrayed, they show an amazing amount of emotion. I think this is the best part of any Eisner comic, he can really get his emotions across and he doesn't just use facial expressions like most artists but he uses their entire body to show emotion. My favorite use of this is in the first story when Firm yells to God "We had a contract!".