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A review by jasonfurman
A Life Force by Will Eisner
5.0
I found this graphic novel stunning, perhaps the best graphic novel I've read (although hard to compare to Maus since I read that twenty years ago). The second volume in "The Contract With God" trilogy, it surpasses the first with a combination of sophisticated near-perfect plotting, excellent artwork, and compelling visual arrangements. Like the stories in the first volume, it is set in the tenements the mythical Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx in the 1930s. Most of the characters are Jewish, but it also features a recent Italian immigrant (plus some mobsters) and a down-on-his-luck WASP.
The story is both original but also feels universal, a series of events that snowball from the Great Depression including a man who is on the verge of giving up, a Rabbi that gives him a small project and hope, an Italian immigrant being harassed by the mob, the good fortune of their hooking up with a WASP who was ruined in the crash but has a good idea bout pulling businesses out of bankruptcy--and a whole series of events around this, including a rekindled romance with a German-Jewish refugee--as this cast of characters struggles to make it in America.
This is all drawn in black-and-white, mostly with conventional panels but also some pages of news clippings and other media that create an air of authenticity around the entire book. It is also a relatively quick read.
The story is both original but also feels universal, a series of events that snowball from the Great Depression including a man who is on the verge of giving up, a Rabbi that gives him a small project and hope, an Italian immigrant being harassed by the mob, the good fortune of their hooking up with a WASP who was ruined in the crash but has a good idea bout pulling businesses out of bankruptcy--and a whole series of events around this, including a rekindled romance with a German-Jewish refugee--as this cast of characters struggles to make it in America.
This is all drawn in black-and-white, mostly with conventional panels but also some pages of news clippings and other media that create an air of authenticity around the entire book. It is also a relatively quick read.