The Best Graphic Novels Ever #4 -- A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories

4. A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories
by Will Eisner
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

Whether or not Eisner actually created the term "graphic novel," this is the collection that introduced the term to most of the comics-reading public. Technically it's more of a graphic short story collection rather than a novel (unless you determine the main character is the place and not the people). Regardless, there's not a dud in this collection.

My faves are "A Contract with God" and "The Street Singer," the former for it's almost depressing loss and recapturing of faith in light of a child's death and the later for the comical statement it makes about how even local celebrity can be a huge letdown after such a wonderful build up.

This volume proves one thing beyond all argument -- if any writer has ever understood people and the quirks that make them unique, that writer is Will Eisner. Period.

The Best Graphic Novels Ever #12 -- The Building

12. The Building
by Will Eisner
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

"Especially troubling to me was the callous removal of buildings. I felt that, somehow, they had a kind of soul … And I wonder what is left behind when a building is torn down." —Will Eisner, The Building

This quote from the book captures for me why the book is such an amazing piece of both writing and art. In the stories contained in this graphic novel (or collection of graphic short stories) cut straight to the soul of the building in question. It becomes an extension of the very people who live inside it and call it home. It returns the favor and helps to shape those who occupy it.

In short, it becomes a part of them as much as they become a part of it.

This is another of Eisner's masterpieces of storytelling, getting right to the heart of what makes common people tick, and it should be required reading for anyone who wants to write or draw comics.

The Best Graphic Novels Ever #19 -- Minor Miracles

19. Minor Miracles
by Will Eisner
Published by DC Comics

The full title of this Eisner work is Minor Miracles: Long Ago and Once upon a Time Back When Uncles Were Heroic, Cousins Were Clever, and Miracles Happened on Every Block, and that's about the best synopsis you're going to get for the book.

Perhaps one of Eisner's most hopeful works, I think. It's also quite a good and proper bookend to A Contract With God.

Made up for four tales (again making it more a short story collection than a true "graphic novel" -- at least for the purists), Eisner once again is at his best creating tales not of the typical comic book fare of caped and masked heroes of out of this world adventures, but instead crafting stories of the everyday, the seemingly mundane drudge of life.

And it's in that drudge of life that he looks for the miraculous, almost with an eye toward magical realism. Almost.

Regardless, this is well worth picking up for any fan of the art form.