Will Eisner's Contract with God was....unexpected. Between the style, stories, and storytelling, it felt transitional, which of course it was. The drawings find themselves somewhere between charicature and and noir, with very inky lines and shading--sometimes to the point that it's difficult to read the image at a first glance. In the opening pages, for example, we see a man coming in from the rain who is just about melting into his surroundings from the water dripping off his coat and hat. (Eisner sure does loves his rain!)
The stories were much darker than what's been seen in the past, thus they almost work against the drawings, which retain a bit of a goofy stylized quality. But they're so serious, revealing a huge amount of dispair and mediocrity. In the end, it's just to explain the characters of this neighborhood, their hopes and dreams as well as the reality that they will probably never escape.
This is, supposedly, the first use of the word "Graphic Novel," because it's simply not a comic...at least, not the way the comics before were. The first few pages especially read more as illustrations than comic panels due to their openness. The text, as is common, is hand-lettered looking something like how grade schoolers print. Unfortunately, at least to me, this seems to almost make a joke of the seriousness of the situation, as well as the way it's told.
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