​: The Neighborhood Critical Survey of Graphic Novels

Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood

Author: Eisner, Will work in which the main protagonist is arguably the Artist: (illustrator) neighborhood itself. While several major characters Publisher: recur throughout the narrative, no one figure com- First book publication: 1995, 2006 (The Contract mands the spotlight. Instead, each shares the stage with with God Trilogy) a large cast of minor or walk-on actors, and together they reveal the dynamic life force underlying the Publication History neighborhood. As the third in the trilogy of Will Eisner’s narra- Dropsie Avenue can be read as an example of Amer- tives centered on a neighborhood in the south Bronx, ican realism, adhering to verisimilitude and empha- Dropsie Avenue was originally published in 1995 by sizing growth through the various choices individuals underground pioneer , under make. A more accurate analysis would place it in the his Kitchen Sink Press. (1978) naturalist tradition, in that the book’s many charac- and (1988) complete the trilogy. When ters (and the neighborhood itself) seem at the mercy Kitchen’s company went out of business in 1999, DC of forces beyond their control. At different times Comics bought the rights to Eisner’s catalog, including throughout the , individuals note the cy- not only his graphic novels but also The Spirit reprints. clical and inevitable nature of the events. DC republished Dropsie Avenue in 2000 as part of The events begin in 1870, at a time when the area its Will Eisner Library series. Like the 1995 original, was farmed by Dutch immigrants. The Van Dropsie the reprint was issued in both hardcover and paperback family notices how the English are beginning to formats. In 2006, when W. W. Norton acquired Eisner’s settle in the region, realizing that the neighborhood is catalog, Dropsie Avenue was reissued once again, this changing. In order to stave off the impact of the new time as part of the hardcover single-volume The Con- arrivals, the drunken Dirk van Dropsie sets fire to the tract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue, which English crops, inadvertently killing his niece; he is also included A Contract with God and A Life Force. then shot by his brother-in-law. These events set the This was only the second Eisner title released under stage for what follows: an episodic and cyclical se- his new publisher, the first being an original graphic ries of ethnic entrenchments, followed by efforts to novel, The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of resist newer arrivals from other ethnic communities, the Elders of Zion. The following year, Norton reis- leading inevitably to bigotry, classism, violence, and sued Dropsie Avenue, along with the other two graphic destruction. novels in the trilogy, as a separate paperback edition. As the narrative unfolds, the Dutch are supplanted by the English, who become upset at the arrival of the Plot Irish, who hound out German immigrants and even- Eisner began his Dropsie Avenue trilogy with the 1978 tually find themselves competing against the Italians. publication of A Contract with God, and Other Tene- The Italians then contend with an emerging Jewish ment Stories, a work that is, mistakenly, considered by presence and eventually confront an influx of Puerto many to be the first “graphic novel.” He returned to the Rican families, who ridicule the arrival of a Hassidic same setting ten years later with A Life Force. sect and then find themselves living among a growing It is appropriate that Eisner ended his trilogy with African American population. Dropsie Avenue, because it has an epic scope and func- Along with its racial strife and class warfare, the tions as a kind of summation. While the previous two Dropsie Avenue neighborhood undergoes suburban- works focus on the lives of just a few Dropsie resi- ization, transit modernization, tenement housing, dents, Dropsie Avenue is a multifaceted, composite gang violence, urban decay, conflagration, and, finally,

212 Critical Survey of Graphic Novels ​Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood gentrification. The graphic novel ends with black and • Izzy Cash, a Jewish ragman with a pushcart, ac- white neighbors, apparently living harmoniously, dis- cumulates enough money to purchase a Dropsie cussing the “foreigners” who have moved onto the Avenue tenement building during the Great De- block and who decorate their houses with “weird colors pression; he amasses a fortune in the real estate [and] dinky ornaments.” In the final panel, a “For Sale” business. His initial resistance, and then accep- sign is planted outside one of the new homes. tance, of housing integration ignites many of the ethnic conflicts throughout the narrative. Characters • Polo Palermo, a boxer who defeats Irish Mike, Given the ensemble nature of Dropsie Avenue and its becomes the hero of the neighborhood’s growing focus on the evolution of an area in the south Bronx, Italian community. He eventually becomes a one could argue that the neighborhood itself functions public leader whose political club oversees the as the main figure in this graphic novel and that its development of Dropsie Avenue. His efforts with multiple facets and the many changes it undergoes are Abie Gold to clean up drug trafficking in the analogous to a rounded and dynamic character. neighborhood lead to his murder. • The Van Dropsie family, whose name comes to • Abie Gold and his parents, fleeing the growing mark the neighborhood, is made up of Dutch Nazi presence in 1930’s Europe, are one of the farmers who lament the encroachments of the earliest Jewish families to move onto Dropsie English in the 1870’s. Dirk van Dropsie’s dis- Avenue. His gifts for argument and conflict reso- gruntlement and drunken rampage not only bring lution, as well as his love of the neighborhood, ruin to the family but also serve as a thematic make him not only a successful lawyer but also blueprint for the events that follow. a city council member. Of all the figures in the • Sean O’Brien is a nouveau riche Irish immigrant graphic novel, he comes closest to being a central in the construction business. His rivalry with the character. O’Leary family introduces class antagonism into • Father Gianelli and Goldstein are the the narrative, and the turmoil of his children, Neil primary religious leaders of the neighborhood. and Coleen, comes to represent the prejudice Their teamwork mirrors that of the Leone and the Irish experience at the hands of their English Gold families and they are two of the few inter- neighbors. ethnic relationships built on cooperation and mu- • Danny Smith functions as an all-American ev- tual respect. eryman. He is a hero in World War I and brings a • Sven Svenson is a Swedish-born superintendent French bride back from Europe. He gets a job as a who wins the lottery and uses the money to buy Bronx city planner, and although wanting to be a the tenement building where he works. His prop- selfless public servant, he is eventually corrupted erty eventually becomes a central location for ra- by Big Ed Casey. Big Ed manipulates Danny into cial conflict, symbolically represented by a boiler building a train station near his tenement prop- explosion that nearly destroys the building. erty, thereby enriching him, and it is this action • Ruby Brown is one of the first African Amer- that brings rapid urbanization to Dropsie Avenue. ican residents on Dropsie Avenue. Her father • Rowena Shepard is a wheelchair-bound idealist works for Sven Svenson until the latter has to with a passion for gardens. With the help of her sell his building. Years later, she becomes the deaf-mute husband, Prince, she builds a suc- deputy mayor for city planning and works with cessful flower business and leaves Dropsie Av- both Abie Gold and Rowena Shepard to create enue. Late in the graphic novel, she returns as a Dropsie Gardens. millionaire to finance the redevelopment of the • “Crazy” Bones is a pusher who buys Svenson’s burned-out neighborhood, creating Dropsie Gar- building and uses it as a central house for his dens as a residential community. drug running. He orchestrates the murder of Polo

213 ​Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood Critical Survey of Graphic Novels

Palermo and, along with Red (a Vietnam veteran Avenue, is nonetheless part and parcel of the book’s and paraplegic), brings decay to the neighbor- themes. Just as one panel intrudes upon another, the hood through his illegal enterprise. individual lives on Dropsie Avenue are in constant con- flict with those living around them. The visual clash Artistic Style between panels suggests the ever-present tensions un- Like Eisner’s other graphic novels, Dropsie Avenue is derlying the neighborhood’s many constituents. Fur- presented in black and white. His drawings are highly thermore, the breakdown or the absence of solid frames realistic, underscoring the kind of style he laid out in gives the narrative a greater sense of flow, where one his theoretical and instructional texts, Comics and Se- event follows naturally from another. This stylistic ef- quential Art (1985), Graphic Storytelling and Visual fect not only drives the narrative forward, but it sug- Narrative (1996), and Expressive Anatomy for Comics gests a causal link between events that creates a sense and Narrative (2008). His lines are primarily clean of inevitability. when representing characters, and he makes substan- tial use of shading to capture the nuances of lighting. Themes Along with this, Eisner often relies on a bold, heavy The overriding theme of Dropsie Avenue concerns eth- inking (especially of backgrounds, but also in terms of noracial conflict. Not only does the clash among the silhouettes) to accentuate the dilemmas in which char- many segments of the neighborhood reveal the darker acters find themselves. This stark black-and-white con- side of the American Dream, but also the interethnic trast is analogous to the moral conflicts that constantly struggles generate almost perpetual action, and this arise in the narrative, suggesting that characters find propels the plot forward. These constant conflicts are themselves trapped by extreme forces over which they symbolized through icons of barriers and destruction. have little control. Windows, fire, and “for sale” signs proliferate and are The art of Dropsie Avenue is also defined through woven throughout the story. another hallmark of Eisner’s style: his unconventional If the graphic novel is read within the tradition of use of panels and framing. While there are many pages literary naturalism, then Eisner’s message about ethnic of the book that adhere to a more traditional use of relations is a bleak one. It exposes the myth of the paneling, more numerous are the instances of panel American melting pot as a useless fiction, and it ques- rupture. Here, as in most of Eisner’s other comics, the tions multicultural idealism. While there are pockets of integrity paneled segments are compromised by the hopefulness in the narrative (such as the philanthropy intrusion of word balloons, a part of characters’ anat- of Rowena Shepard, the dogged determinism of Abie omies, or elements of the background from another Gold, and the civic-minded efforts of Polo Palmero and panel on the page. The result is a “bleeding” of one nar- Ruby Brown), the final tone is one of somber inevita- rative segment into another. Similarly, Eisner often for- bility. As such, Eisner broaches a larger philosophical goes symmetrical, angled panels altogether. Instead of theme regarding human destructiveness and ongoing containing an event within a traditional straight-lined civil discord. perimeter, he uses detail from the panel’s background, or even elements from an adjacent segment, to frame Impact a portion of the page’s story. For example, the fire of a While nowhere near as groundbreaking as A Contract burning building, a window casing, the smoke of a cig- with God, Dropsie Avenue is nonetheless significant in arette, or even the streets of the neighborhood serve as that it completes a larger graphic cycle that, for many, borders that separate one narrative event from another. best defines the final stage of Eisner’s career. When On some pages, there is a complete absence of W. W. Norton acquired the rights to Eisner’s non-The any sort of panel, and events on one part of the page Spirit catalog in 2005, The Contract with God Trilogy blend seamlessly with others. Eisner’s distinctive style was the first volume of material the publisher chose to of framing and paneling, while not unique to Dropsie reissue.

214 Critical Survey of Graphic Novels ​Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood

Dropsie Avenue is also important in that it mitigates Bibliography the charges of sentimentality in Eisner’s comics. In Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. Mil- graphic novels such as (1986), Minor waukie: M Press, 2005. Miracles (2000), Fagin the Jew (2003), and even the Dauber, Jeremy. “Comic Books, Tragic Stories: Will other works in The Contract with God Trilogy, there Eisner’s American Jewish History.” In The Jewish is a slight strain of melodrama that, at times, threatens Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, edited by Sa- to undermine the socially critical edge of Eisner’s nar- mantha Baskind and Ranen Omer-Sherman. New ratives. In concluding the multifaceted portrait of Eis- Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008. ner’s south Bronx setting, Dropsie Avenue throws into Roth, Laurence. “Drawing Contracts: Will Eisner’s question any easy or unequivocal interpretation of Eis- Legacy.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 3 ner’s text and, as such, adds to a grittier, hard-edged, (Summer, 2007): 463-484. and more realistic reading of the landmark trilogy. Royal, Derek Parker. “Sequential Sketches of Ethnic While scholarship on Eisner’s comics is still relatively Identity: Will Eisner’s A Contract with God as sparse, what does exist focuses primarily on the texts Graphic Cycle.” College Literature 38, no. 3 that compose The Contract with God Trilogy. (Summer, 2011): 150-167. Derek Parker Royal ______. “There Goes the Neighborhood: Cycling Eth- noracial Tension in Will Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue.” Further Reading Shofar 29, no. 2 (Winter, 2011): 120-145. Eisner, Will. Life, in Pictures: Autobiographical Sto- Schumacher, Michael. Will Eisner: A Dreamer’s Life in ries (2007). Comics. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. ______. New York: Life in the Big City (2006). Pekar, Harvey. The Best of American Splendor (2005). See also: American Splendor; A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories; The Spirit

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