Will Eisner - Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

In the late 1970s, Eisner turned his attention to longer storytelling forms. A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (Baronet Books, October 1978) is an early example of an American graphic novel, combining thematically linked short stories into a single square-bound volume. Eisner continued with a string of graphic novels that tell the history of New York's immigrant communities, particularly Jews, including The Building, A Life Force, Dropsie Avenue and To the Heart of the Storm. He continued producing new books into his seventies and eighties, at an average rate of nearly one a year. Each of these books was done twice — once as a rough version to show editor Dave Schreiner, then as a second, finished version incorporating suggested changes.

Some of his last work was the retelling in sequential art of novels and myths, including Moby-Dick. In 2002, at the age of 85, he published Sundiata, based on the part-historical, part-mythical stories of a West African king, "The Lion of Mali". Fagin the Jew is an account of the life of Dickens' character Fagin, in which Eisner tries to get past the stereotyped portrait of Fagin in Oliver Twist.

His last graphic novel, The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an account of the making of the anti-semitic hoax The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was completed shortly before his death and published in 2005 .