A LIFE FORCE by WILL EISNER

William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor, and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (WIKIPEDIA)

A Life Force is a 1988 graphic novel by Will Eisner. It is the second book in the Contract with God trilogy, preceded by A Contract with God (1978) and followed by Dropsie Avenue (1995). Like the other titles it's also set in New York City, taking place in the 1930s.

 

Will Eisner

In the book, A Life Force, declared by R. Crumb to be "a masterpiece," Eisner re-creates himself in his protagonist, Jacob Shtarkah, whose existential search reflected Eisner's own lifelong struggle. Chronicling not only the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression but also the rise of Nazism and the spread of left-wing politics, Eisner combined the miniaturist sensibility of Henry Roth with the grand social themes of novelists such as Dos Passos and Steinbeck.

Since we cannot show the whole graphic novel, we select the following episodes: Jacob Shtarkah, married to Rifka, meets Frieda Gold who arrives in New York and had fled from Nazi Germany. She is an old love of Jacob. He has an affaire with her and wants a divorce....

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