A Contract With God

I read Will Eisner's A Contract With God and immediately felt slapped in the face by how stunning the inkwork was. Within the first few pages, Eisner renders several pages in a row of a man walking through the rainy streets, and the sheer detail and craftsmanship he manages to get out of hatched lines is a thing to marvel at. The content of the stories themselves are impressive as well, with very adult themes and situations, such as death, rape, adultery, and blasphemy. Eisner's Jewish background forms a very large element in this book, being a semi-autobiographical set of stories taking place in the Bronx.
This book is a fundamental part of comic history, being one the earliest labeled as a "graphic novel," a term Eisner says he came up with on the spot while on the phone (although he later discovered it had been use beforehand), and it certainly feels much more engaging and stark in comparison to some of its contemporary comics at the time.
The first story in the collection (and the titular one) was born out of the death of Eisner's own daughter, and it feels suitably personal. It's hard not to read Eisner's own words being conveyed through Frimme Hersh's anger at God's "betrayal," and it becomes almost hard to read when you know the backstory.