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A review by lukedaloop
A Contract with God by Will Eisner
2.0
The art and mastery of the graphic form is impeccable - but the stories seem to falter in their poignancy as the book goes on. Eisner's emphasis on them being stories he knows and remembers from a past life heightens the drama, but also creates a stark picture of the time period and mentality, as dark things like rape, murder, and even dalliances into pedophilia make their way into the story; each treated with a shocking amount of light-heartedness.
This may have been the fault of the medium or the artist that struggled to find the true horror of these acts, but characters brush off traumatic events almost effortlessly (or, worse, treat them as quotidian experiences) that either paints a horrific picture of what the past was like in this area or posits a wildly privileged authorial point-of-view, or some weird combination of the two.
It is, without a doubt, a work of mastery; but it is also, unfortunately, a work very obviously of a different time.
This may have been the fault of the medium or the artist that struggled to find the true horror of these acts, but characters brush off traumatic events almost effortlessly (or, worse, treat them as quotidian experiences) that either paints a horrific picture of what the past was like in this area or posits a wildly privileged authorial point-of-view, or some weird combination of the two.
It is, without a doubt, a work of mastery; but it is also, unfortunately, a work very obviously of a different time.