Jewish Perspectives
on History, Tradition and the Present

In 1978 Will Eisner published what is probably his most famous illustrated narrative, “A Contract With God.” To dissociate his work from commercial comic books, Eisner described it as a graphic novel. It portrays the life of a Jewish immigrant in New York, particularly his uneasy relationship with God. A second major graphic novel to rise to fame also addresses a Jewish fate. Art Spiegelman deals in “Maus” with his father’s history of persecution and survival under the NS regime. Jewish history and traditions have since come to rank among the permanent arsenal of themes pursued and inscribed in the canon of comic book literature by authors such as Ben Katchor, Rutu Modan, Joann Sfar or James Sturm.

The Jew of New York