Contract With God

I read Will Eisner's 'Contract With God' and I've got to say that it was definitely something that made me grin as I read. I couldn't help it. All the irony added into the graphic novel was just simply entertaining. The man makes a contract with god as a child going to America. He makes a life for himself, in charge of a synagog and a child placed at his door. As he grows up, his child passes away and he finds that God broke his contract. So he 'argues' with god and throws the contract written on a rock out the window. He starts becoming a business man, buying and selling property with the deeds of the synagog. Eventually, he asks the rabbis to make him a new contract with god. Thinking he's a good man, they agree and write him up a new contract. He dies shortly after and a child outside finds his contract that he had thrown away so many years ago. The child signs the contract himself.

Everything that was written I could see coming. It was an obvious thing. I think I just personally search for ironic situations in stories. So it made sense to me that everything that happened went as it did. As for Eisner himself, I think I greatly enjoy his sense of humor in his writing. It's almost tragic all the things that he puts this man through, but by the end, you just can't help thinking 'he deserved it.' Not at the beginning. It didn't seem like his daughter deserved to die. But once he grew up and started abusing his power, it just made sense that he would die. It was something I knew would happen to him. With the attitude the main character portrayed, it seemed fitting that god would be vengeful towards him.

One thing that really interested me was how the words on the page became an art form in themselves. They could become different artistic forms that worked with the page more than a simple speech bubble with words in it. I remember on one particular page, the words formed into rain drops. It just seemed that they interacted more with the pages than usual comics that I'm used to reading. It gave off more of a mood than most words usually do. Eisner knew what he was doing and clearly was an excellent story teller and artist.