Early Graphic Novel, Signed Hardcover

Contract with God [Signed, Numbered]

Eisner, Will

Publication: New York: Baronet, 1978. First Edition.

Notes: A beautiful copy of one of the most significant graphic novels, numbered and signed by Eisner and additionally inscribed in the year of publication.

Contract with God is not, as it is sometimes described, the first (American) graphic novel. It is rather the first such book to find commercial and critical success. The publisher's marketing of it as a "graphic novel" brought the term into common use, and the book's influence gave a new impetus to this nascent genre of American fiction. Contract with God does not just bring together words and pictures with a new level of mastery. By telling an autobiographical story set in the Jewish tenements of New York in the early 20th century, Eisner transformed the trope of comic book hero origin stories into an American origin story.

In the introduction to this book, Eisner struggles to describe his artistic purpose for Contract with God because there wasn't really a word for it (although the term graphic novel had been coined in the 1960s, it was not in common use). "I must confess to a certain sense of uneasiness at trying to explain what I am about to present," Eisner writes. "If I have been successful at this, there will be no interruptions in the flow of narrative because the picture and the text are so totally dependent on each other as to be inseparable for even a moment."

One could go on at length about Eisner's importance to comics. Let it suffice to say that the comic book equivalent of the Hugo or Edgar Award is called the Eisner.

This numbered hardcover limited edition was published simultaneously with a small press paperback edition. Despite its inauspicious beginnings with a small, short-lived press, the book is still in print, now with W. W. Norton, which has four different versions for sale (standalone, omnibus, Centennial Edition, and critical edition).

Edition + Condition: First edition (states "First printing, October 1978"), hardcover issue. This is no. 800 of 1500 signed and numbered on the front free endpaper. A very near fine copy in black cloth stamped in gilt; issued without a dust jacket. Despite the comparatively large print run, the book is scarce and it is seldom found in anything like fine condition.

Item No: #366288

Price: $600