I appreciated a lot of things from Will Eisner's work, especially his draftsmanship and compositions. In A Contract with God, I enjoyed the topics and themes since they were very real and rough, in a way. My favorite story was the first one, since I felt more for the characters and was a lot more invested in his story. I also thought it had an interesting take on one's relationship with religion.
I really wanted to know how the main character's life turns out after he becomes selfish and "evil". It was interesting finding out his original motive was his daughter, though, by the time I got to that point of the story I couldn't relate much to his character. I enjoyed going through it, mostly because I appreciated his style, but often I was brought out of the story because I could very easily tell when dialogue was written to teach a lesson. These lessons were usually very on the nose and obvious, which made me disconnect with the work.
Overall I enjoyed Will Eisner's work and I'm excited to check out more of it!
I agree with you that a lot of the dialogue and the conclusions of the stories felt blatantly moralistic in a way that lessened their integrity as a story. I hold with the philosophy that a storyteller should not let their own moral/political/whatever views or even the general themes they are going for overtake the actual story. These things will always be present in one way or another, because they are a huge part of any person's identity and will therefore unavoidably influence the art they create. But if they are too visible, it almost always takes away from the story and audience immersion.
ReplyDeleteI feel like audiences now tend to be very attuned to whether some feels genuine and organic, or like the creator is trying to sell them something — to the extent that they may be repelled and take a contrary stance, even if they would otherwise agree with the message. Of course, some of Eisner's views could also now be considered old-fashioned and wrong. For example, I cringed internally when, in the "Vacationers" story, the pretty young woman was raped by the handsome young man she'd been pursuing after he found out she wasn't actually rich... and then of course the plain, geeky fellow she'd previously rejected turned out to be the man for her after all — he will accept her even though she's been "sullied," and defend her honor. The way the narrative is framed seems to imply that she is at least a little bit to blame for the attack, because she lied and "led the young man on." Plus we get the common and very toxic "nice guy" story, where a woman is inevitably proven wrong for making her own romantic choices.
It is interesting to observe that Eisner made a huge leap in terms of storytelling style from the world of the mainstream comics at the time, and yet his (in many ways pioneering) work still feels dated in some ways, and is still in many ways closer to the simplistic outlook of the golden age superheroes.