Eisner has rightfully been called a master of the craft, no small praise since he essentially invented the graphic novel with <i>The Contract with God.</i> Before him, no one had really considered the illustrated genre of books quite this way: a book-length comic?

Well, not exactly. Once Eisner settles in, his characters and situations--while occasionally in scenes predicted or now tropes--are rich in layers, in history, in motivations. What I admired most in reading this series in order is to witness his own development of how such stories might be told or framed. The neighborhood itself is his character, and Eisner's stories are first hyper-local, then expand to cultural life, the world at Dropsie's borders, the long life-history of space. 

Many characters earn some degree of justice, but not in ways we might expect. And major and minor power figures are always at work behind the scenes while a woman wonders about her son who has not written or a man who seeks just another carpentry job. Across time, their anger and loyalties cycle and cycle around ethnicity, around birthright, around property and ownership. 

There is nothing profound in any one story on Dropsie Avenue. But Eisner did not merely create the first graphic novel here; he also explored a new type of ambition in storytelling, something so many who followed him have failed to recognize.