Will Eisner 1917-2005 saw himself as a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak, and the never-ending struggle to prevail. The publication of emA Contract With Godem 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. pMore than a quarter-century after the initial publication of emA Contract With Godem, 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.ppAs the dramas unfold in emA Contract With Godem, the first book in this new trilogy, it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh, the pious Jew, first loses his beloved daughter, then breaks his contract with his maker, and ends up as a slumlord it is on Dropsie Avenue where a street si