Published quietly in 1978, Will Eisner's revolutionary literary work A Contract With God marked the invention of the modern graphic novel, took on a life of its own, and inspired a generation of "sequential artists." 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 A Contract With God when Eisner was sixty-one proved to be a watershed moment both for him and for comic