Eisner & Thompson

In reading Will Eisner’s A Contract With God and Craig Thompson’s Blankets, there are several similarities between their approaches to graphic storytelling that make themselves apparent; the most obvious one being, their autobiographical nature, and dealing with the themes of spirituality and God.

A Contract With God presents a cultural memory and the harsh reality of the tenements in New York during the 1930s. Blankets is an intricate and earnest account of its creator’s coming of age. Both are not only beautiful works of art but also complex pieces of literature that don’t shy away from serious subject matter.

Both Eisner and Thompson take a non-linear approach to the narrative but maintain clear sense continuity through emotions and actions, its almost cinematic. Thompson makes interesting use of transitional devices often used in film editing. That combined with his expressive use of brushstrokes to create flow and movement really makes the pacing in Blankets stand out.

Both their works consist of a fleeting sense of nostalgia and a dreamlike recollection of events and experiences, weaving a story stringing together memories from different times of life. As Denny O’Neil puts it while introducing A Contract With God, they seem like adult’s attempts to make whole their childhood experiences, combining the past and the present into a single experience.