One of my favorite aspects about comics and art in general is the concept of bringing through human emotions through the illustration of form and character. The concept of creating a sense of empathy through characters that are transcribed on paper rather than in real life spell bounds me. And no illustrators bring this concept across better than Will Eisner and Craig Thompson.
A Contract with God by Will Eisner It is a short story cycle that revolves around poor Jewish characters who live in a New York City tenement. .
It demonstrates and showcases the frailty of faith, ideals and all of the smaller qualities that constitute humanity, and how they are affected by circumstances within and and outside of our own control. It shows a series of short stories, some about tragedy, others about prosperity, and how both our own choices and sad cases of serendipity can greatly affect our lives. I would highly recommend this comic book to anyone, if only for its strange sense of optimism in the face of sad stories.
Another similar story to A Contract with God is Blankets by Craig Thompson. As a coming-of-age autobiography, the book tells the story of Thompson's childhood in an Evangelical Christian family, his first love, and his early adulthood.
I personally believe that this story takes the concept of storytelling through figure and gives it more dimension. The use of graphic elements, such as reoccurring shapes, thematic patterns, and significant stylistic representations of form and anatomical structure to assist in pacing, emphasis and theme. It also uses focus on particular aspects of the human body, namely the human reproductive organs and their significance as well as their generation for awkwardness and embarrassment during adolescence, to assist in story telling, while A Contract with God is more simplistic.
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