A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories

Will Eisner is an interesting figure for me. He's one of those names that always turns up whenever people talk about the most influential and important storytellers in the medium of graphic fiction, but at the same time, he's someone who I've never been able to understand the hype about, having read only his Spirit work.

Now I get it. This book was a complete revelation for me - the way Eisner uses the simplest of pen strokes to create emotive environments, the way he can craft scenes that are both sparse and rich at the same time. The way he can tell four stories that are completely different from each other, but which are really all the same story. Beautiful and brilliant.