30 CHICAGO READER | DECEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE Books THE CONTRACT WITH GOD TRILOGY: LIFE ON DROPSIE AVENUE WILL EISNER (NORTON) The Granddaddy of the Graphic Novel A year after his death, Will Eisner finally gets some respect. By Whet Moser y the mid-1970s Will Eisner of his books, the genre he legit- in exchange for good fortune. Aiding lowed by better fortune, but only was already an eminence imized has finally legitimized its the elderly and committing himself with the help of a mob-connected B grise of the comics world. founding work: Norton, which pub- to a New York synagogue, he enjoys Italian carpenter and a down-on- He’d started out during the lished his final original novel last a modicum of success until a baby is his-luck Yankee with big-business Depression as a 19-year-old prodigy, spring—The Plot: The Secret History left on his doorstep and he under- ties who has eyes for Jacob’s drawing for the short-lived kids’ of the Elders of Zion—is now rere- takes his most generous project— daughter. Over 140 pages Jacob publication Wow, What a leasing 14 Eisner works, beginning raising the anonymous child. When endures a wedding (his son’s), a Magazine! When that folded he with a handsome hardcover volume she dies from an unknown illness, divorce (his own), a reunion cofounded a lucrative comics stu- that combines A Contract With God he spits on the contract and hurls it (with a Holocaust escapee from dio; three years later, in 1940, he with two related books, A Life Force out the window. his past), a Mafia hit, Marxist created The Spirit, a seven-page, (1988) and Dropsie Avenue (1995). Thus released from his obligation revolutionaries, and a fire. full-color weekly now famous for its Readers familiar only with the to behave morally, he amasses great At the end of the storyJacob is visual innovation. Despite a detour current generation of graphic nov- wealth and lands a pretty shiksa left in his apartment with his ex- to serve in World War II, he kept elists—with Chris Ware’s quiet, girlfriend. Near the end of his life, wife, saving a cockroach from her the strip going until 1952, launching stuttering loners or Ben Katchor’s however, he has a change of heart rolled-up newspaper. Eisner’s the career of Spirit assistant Jules dreamy, cryptic sketches of city and has a group of rabbis write him cornball fearlessness carries him Feiffer along the way. After that he life—will find Eisner very, a new contract. On the day he’s through this overstuffed, circular started a graphics company and set- well ...cartoony. While contempo- given the document, he promises nomic cycles, touching on civic narrative. It requires as much sus- tled into a teaching career at the rary artists often go for a stylized, to rededicate himself to God and corruption, the Mafia, race riots, pension of disbelief as the social School of Visual Arts in his native emotionally subtle look, Eisner is a promptly dies of a heart attack. the drug boom, and white flight. realist classics that inspired the New York City. The Eisners, the master of the outsize gesture. His As Eisner increases the number The result is a time-lapse narra- story, but the graphic novel turns comics industry’s annual awards for characters are quick to tears, quick of plot threads in each story, the tive that relies on cliche to keep out to be a good—perhaps better— excellence, are named in his honor. to violence. Aspiring to literary sig- hammy tragedies mount and the up the breakneck pace. format for such cinematic sweep. But despite his reputation as a nificance, he aped the writers of his body count increases. His story- It’s the second novel, A Life Force, Eisner, whose Spirit, after all, was a visual genius and canny business- youth, combining O. Henry’s telling is visually as well as struc- that uses Eisner’s theatrical, com- criminologist masquerading as a man, when Eisner decided to ven- telegraphed morality with the turally striking—Eisner uses the pressed narration to best effect. A superhero who lived out of his own ture back into the comics medium social realism of Dos Passos, and vertical landscape of his tenement series of interconnected life stories, grave, recognized that an inherent- in 1978 he had trouble selling his his scratchy technique hums with childhood to dramatic effect. And it’s no less than a social history of ly fantastic medium made such first property—a bleak, elliptical the vitality of the big city. in addition to his literary influ- New York during the Depression bathos permissible. quartet of stories about tenement Eisner wrote A Contract With ence, he owes a clear debt to the combined with a philosophical More importantly, the over- life titled A Contract With God. God while grieving the loss of his hard-boiled moralizing of early investigation into the self-conscious flowing drama of A Life Force Eisner wanted a large publishing only daughter to leukemia, and the Cagney movies and the operatic nature of mankind. It opens with provides its own moral—don’t house to lend legitimacy to the book is drenched in a kind of exis- excesses of the tabloids of the day. a moving if maudlin scene in sweat the big stuff, because it will ambitious, uncategorizable work, tential bad luck, a sense that the The trilogy’s final book, Dropsie which an unemployed carpenter be overshadowed by even bigger which he called a “graphic novel,” only order in the world leads Avenue, departs from Contract’s named Jacob carries on a one-way stuff. The first time Jacob rescues but had to settle for Baronet Books, things to work out the way they lean fables by charging through debate about the purpose of life a cockroach, it contrasts modestly publishers of the Great Illustrated shouldn’t. The title story concerns the history of the fictional Bronx with a cockroach that he’s saved with the narrative that follows. Classics line. When published, the an idealistic young Russian who, street where the first two take from the foot of a passerby. Later, The second time it reframes the book was critically acclaimed but orphaned and then sent by his vil- place. Beginning with the 19th- when his wife asks how his day melodrama as a modest narrative found little popular success. lage to America to escape a series of century Dutch farmers (the Van was—a day when he’s been fired— in the grand scheme of history. Eisner died this past January at pogroms, inscribes a contract with Dropsies) who originally held the he responds, “Today?? Today I Eisner’s heirs—who include 87, and this winter, in a bit of dark God into a stone he carries with land, it follows the area through saved the life of a cockroach.” heavy hitters like Art Spiegelman irony that could’ve come from one him, promising a life of good works waves of immigration and eco- This act of benevolence is fol- and Frank Miller as well as Ware CHICAGO READER | DECEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE 31 Ink Well by Ben Tausig 42.Violet variety Sounds Like Love 45.Includes on a memo 48.Having more rings, in the forest ACROSS 50.Sit at a light 1. Embattled 51. They’ve got your back 6. “Oh, how adorable!” 54.Crossed (out) 9. Domesticates 14.It may go down on one knee 56.North Avenue Beach objective 15.Acupuncturist’s life force 57.Missed Connection: You gallantly lent and Katchor—have taken a step 16.Multiple choice choices, perhaps me your umbrella during a down- back into a cooler, more subtle 17.Casual Encounter: hotel employee pour, then disappeared—my ______! 60.Back at the track form within a more mature medi- seeking partner for a discreet ______ 19.Cattail’s locale 62.Former Department of Homeland um. In that context his grandiosity 20.El entrance Security head seems dated, even quaint. Eisner’s 21. In Search Of: Southeast Asian boyfriend; 63. In Search Of: Lady friend for a foreign exchange student in Yorkshire— excess of ambition, however, maybe you can work out as my______ 23. Zeta follower where can I find my______? expanded the possibilities of the 24.The norm: abbr. 66.Astral hunter nascent genre. Social history, reli- 26.Good times 67.It may be stroked or massaged gious fable, character-driven 27.Material in a trucker cap 68.Principle 29.Make your case 69.Is inclined miniatures, explicit sexuality, cin- 32.Parts of pts. 70.Snare ematic violence—the explosion of 33. Optimal 71. “Giant” of pro wrestling narrative forms Eisner compiled 35.Broken candy dispenser DOWN into the trilogy can be as enervating 38.In Search Of: Central European guy who swings both ways; hoping to 1. Pecs’ neighbors as it is enthralling. But in creating a receive a ______ 2. Had confidence (in) world too big for one book, he cre- 41. Skull & Bones members, for instance 3. “Keep yer pants on!” ated a world big enough for those 4. When “Good Morning Baltimore” plays in Hairspray he inspired to make their homes in, LAST WEEK: BOOK GROUPS 5. Where film winds up and they’ve been working in the 6. King topper light of his creation ever since. v 7. Stimulate 8. Spanish con, here 9. Language of Sri Lanka 10.Addis ______ 34.Meadow 49.Yanks’ foes 11. To a greater degree 36.Start the keg 52.U.S.