I think works like this really show that comics and graphic narrative is something that can be for older readers and can express serious subjects and themes.
I like Denny O'Neil's intro when he talks about some people complaining about Eisner's "cartoony" style for the characters in incomplete environments; he attributes this to the stories being told from Eisner's memory and that we don't remember people and places as the way they actually are but rather as archetypes, caricatures or certain land marks and key elements in the case of the locations. Even the pages are designed in a way that makes them feel like memories; many images flow into one another with floating vignettes and overlapping panels like thoughts running together. One example of this flowing dream feel is on page. 111 when the Super is drinking and thinking about sex, I can feel him slipping into his thoughts with each drawing of him overlapping and melding into the next until I can literally see the thoughts in his head through his eyes.
Eisner's non confinement to comic panels is one way that he broke from the typical comic mold with this book. Another thing that separates A Contract With God from many other comics before it is that there are no clear distinctions between good guys and bad guys, he shows everyone as flawed humans with struggles and hardships of their own. Will Eisner really had a good ability to draw a characters feelings and emotions expressed with more than just their face. Many other comic illustrators would make their characters theatrically expressive in the face, thinking the whole face needed to make the emotion clear, however Eisner knew how to have characters express emotions more subtly with the body first, then eyes, and finally everything else depending on what range was needed. Another way this book was different from others was that even though dialog is still in speech bubbles, the narration is not confined to boxes but rather Eisner's beautifully hand-done words flow into the environments and become part of the images. Since he was so good at telling the story through characters and scenes, there are portions where the words are not needed.
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