Eisner and Thompson

This week I read Will Eisner’s “A Contract With God” and part one of Craig Thompson’s “Blankets”. Blankets felt like something I read before, and it is. The author/artist’s life being the subject of a graphic narrative is common and it is a fun way to portray your life, like a Draw My Life on YouTube. Blankets however lost my interest halfway through because I felt like it was dragging on and I didn’t have a connection with Thompson’s experience, which is ok. His story just isn’t for me. Will Eisner’s A Contract With God was very interesting. He took the graphic novel and pivoted it toward adult audiences. The stories in his novel were heavy and held a deeper lesson in them. It was somewhat reminiscent of The Twilight Zone to me with the sort of twist endings. Eisner also did a great job with his visual storytelling. In his interview with Stan Lee, he talked about how he approaches it, and I agreed with him on the points he made. He demonstrated sequential art, which helped make his graphic novel clear, understandable, and more engaging. He also brought up showing emotion and I really liked how he said you can show a person’s emotion just from their back depending on how you draw their posture. We can recognize an emotion from that much, constantly seeing a character’s face for emotion can be avoided and it makes for an interesting image as a bystander seeing these characters experience their story.