Ze Graphic Novel

For this week I read Will Eisner's Contract with God and Blankets.

First of all, I really enjoyed reading Contract with God.  Eisner really knew how to work a panel and pose his characters to make a scene as expressive as possible.  It was just so appealing to look at and all the characters were really fleshed out and you really got a good gist of who they were.  Like the one comic of the Super guy who was the angry landlord and was constantly yelling and being grumpy pants.  It was amazing to me that these stories were all based on true stories, but they were all so DEPRESSING. For example, the Hasidic jew lost his daughter and then kind of went downhill, ok maybe really downhill.  And the Super story was kind of creepy I wasn't expecting that kind of turn of events.  And the alley singer was just really sad in terms of being at the lowest of the low and losing your one beacon of hope.  My favorite panels would have to be the first few pages of him walking in the rain they were just so beautiful and really got the heart-wrenching mood across. It literally almost looked like the pages were melting and it was gorgeous.  Eisner's environments in particular were so lifelike that even without the blurb in the beginning about how the graphic novel was based on tenement living in the 1930s, it would have read as that time period.  

I mean, some of the comic was a bit racey like the ones we read last week.  There was some negative Jewish remarks, okay maybe a lot of them.  And when the alley singer slapped the baby out of his wife's hands I was like WHAT IS GOING ON. And then he was slapping the wife and I was like SOMEBODY STOP THIS MADMAN HE'S ON A ROLL.

I have conflicting thoughts on Blankets.  I liked reading it, it was a really quick and easy to get through since it flowed so well.  I mean, I read it in one night.  I really liked the surreal aspects of the comic and how the pages seemed to weave between reality and the sort of dreamy-like world. What I didn't like was the story was kind of long winded.  It kind of reminded me of reading Interview with a Vampire for the Lit Horror class,  the character of Louis in particular.  Like Louis' whining, it was very long winded.  Sometimes I felt like we were getting nowhere in the story, it was like you were constantly hitting a wall.  It was just really slow and lots of angst concerning the main character. Pages and pages of angst.

Unfortunately, it was kind of hard for me to stay interested in the whole Christian motif throughout the story.  But I do think Craig's characters were really fleshed out, it was just an overflow of angst on behalf of his relationship.