Will Eisner and Craig Thompson

When Will Eisner started producing comics, I feel as if someone finally understood what potential comics had as an art form.  Here was a way to make people read good stories that they wouldn’t necessarily read if they were just in text form.  Also, he was the first to realize that the text could also be incorporated into the visual to make each page that much more dynamic.  There isn’t one instance I believe that Eisner didn’t fully layout how the writing was going to be incorporated into the overall design and how it could reiterate the feeling of the scene.  I think this might be side effect from working with Disney that he must make everything tie together and allude to the atmospheric feeling of each moment.  However, by producing his own work, he can now create such atmospheres but with much darker themes.

And how dark those themes would get.  Despair, depression, loneliness, betrayal, and death were in each and every story within A Contract with God.  It was a little hard to get through because it’s very easy to connect with these characters.  They are everyday sinners just like us that either make their own deathbed or are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They are human, we are human, and we can connect to their pain on some level allowing these particular comics to lead us on quite the emotional roller coaster.  In fact, some of our students said that it was hard to get through the whole thing because nothing ever gets better. 

I will say that despite the rather gruesome stories, the comic itself was enjoyable to look at.  It was an interesting experience, for me at least, because I was spending a lot of time conflicted at fawning over the artwork and investing myself in the storytelling…both of which are expertly done.  The amount of time Eisner put into making very dynamic compositions and shots while also maintaining a sense of austerity in the lines and characters themselves is nothing short of amazing.  There are also minute details such as a cross necklace on an adulterer that put a touch of sick humor on the whole situation.  The clear mix of complexity with simplicity reflects well on the stories themselves. 

Craig Thompson does very much the same thing but isn’t nearly as detailed in the drawings as Eisner is.  That isn’t a fault, either.  Thompson uses his skill in a very graphic style that allows the audience to read the story quick and easy.  In fact, it’s easy to imagine him drawing the pictures just as fast as the lines suggest.  It’s funny because the simplified characters and bulky lines gives everything in his drawn world a layer of cuteness that surrounds them…and the themes within his comics are not cute within the least.  I would even say they lie along the lines of depressing and grotesque.

I’m really interested in the way that he plays with the panels and registers, though.  The registers alone are what lead the viewer’s eyes from one action to the other, not what is within the panels, which I consider unique.  The only other time I’ve seen the registers take the main focus in story telling was in Arkham Asylum the hardcover comic books where the registers would break and veer off worse and worse in accordance to the Joker’s madness.  Something about the panels isn’t exactly normal either with the way they are shaped and cut off.  I can easily see why Eisner and Thompson were grouped together this week.