Reproduction of: A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories
Reproduction of: A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories
Written by Will Eisner
New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2006
7" x 10"
Wilson Library, University of Minnesota Libraries
Will Eisner made his first landmark contribution to the comics tradition as the creator of The Spirit, a fastidiously drawn, noir-ish strip about a masked vigilante crime fighter. The Spirit ran in Sunday supplements from 1940 to 1952.
In the 1970s, Eisner experimented with long-format comics. In 1978, Baronet Books published his A Contract with God, which is often cited as the first modern American graphic novel. It inaugurated a series of similar works examining the trials and tribulations of New York City's immigrant communities.