![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "I must confess to a certain sense of uneasiness at trying to explain what I am about to present," Eisner writes. In the introduction to this book, Eisner struggles to describe his artistic purpose for Contract with God because there wasn't really a word for it (although the term graphic novel had been coined in the 1960s, it was not in common use). Here was the comic format telling an American origin story rather than narrating the creation of some new superhero. Contract with God does not just bring together words and pictures with a new level of mastery, Eisner tells an autobiographical story set in the Jewish tenements of New York in the early 20th century. The publisher's marketing of it as a "graphic novel" brought the term into common use and the book's influence gave a new impetus to this nascent genre of American fiction. It is rather the first such book to find commercial and critical success. Contract with God is not, as it is sometimes described, the first (American) graphic novel. ![]()
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