Contract With God Trilogy: Life On Dropsie Avenue HC (2006 W.W. Norton) By Will Eisner comic books

1st printing. Story and art by Will Eisner. A Contract with God, originally published in 1978, was the first graphic novel. Along with A Life Force and Dropsie Avenue, they laid the track for such seminal works as Maus and Persepolis. Set during the Great Depression, this literary trilogy, assembled in one volume for the first time, presents a treasure house of now near-mythic stories that fictionally illustrate the bittersweet tenement life of Eisner's youth. With nearly two dozen new illustrations and a revealing new foreword, this book ultimately tells the epic story of life, death, and resurrection while exploring man's fractious relationship with an all-too-vengeful God. Hardcover, 510 pages, B&W. Cover price $29.95.

2nd and later printings. NOTE: Covers on reprints may vary. Story and art by Will Eisner. The publication of A Contract With God when Eisner was sixty-one proved to be a watershed moment both for him and for comic literature. It marked the birth of the modern graphic novel and the beginning of an era when serious cartoonists could be liberated from their stultifying comic-book format. More than a quarter-century after the initial publication of A Contract With God, and in the last few months of his life, Eisner chose to combine the three fictional works he had set on Dropsie Avenue, the mythical street of his youth in Depression-era New York City. The Contract With God Trilogy is a mesmerizing, fictional chronicle of a universal American experience and Eisner's most poignant and enduring literary legacy. Hardcover, 500 pages, B&W. Cover price $39.95.