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New York City. It may be the toughest city on Earth in which to survive. The endless flow of people, the breakneck pace. But, amid the glistening skyscrapers of Manhattan are the neighborhoods that are the city's heart and soul. They are places filled with love, death, betrayal, spiritual longing, and earthly poverty. Places of miracles large and small. MINOR MIRACLES is the first original work for DC Comics by master storyteller, comics innovator and legend Will Eisner - following the recent Last Day In Vietnam graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics - as he returns to the New York City of his youth, proving miracles can happen every day in unlikely places to unlikely people. MINOR MIRACLES, the latest addition to the Will Eisner Library and available at the same time in both hardcover and softcover versions, is a collection of four remembrances of the apocryphal stories or "meinsas" that filled the air of the tenements and streets of the Dropsie Avenue of Eisner's youth (the same neighborhood found in Eisner's A CONTRACT WITH GOD and DROPSIE AVENUE). These are stories of outrageous fortune and unlucky coincidence that, like memories themselves, are subjective and often unreliable - but ultimately, miraculous. In "The Miracle of Dignity," a rags-to-riches-to-rags tale, Uncle Amos is a fast-talking beggar (some say con man) who learns that dignity comes at a price above worldly wealth. "Street Magic" is a neighborhood parable about surviving the pitfalls of being a newly arrived immigrant in New York that proves brute strength and violence is no match for good sleight-of- hand. In "The New Kid on the Block," a strange and primitive boy turns up on Dropsie Avenue, bringing with him a mysterious wave of good luck and harmony. But when he becomes a victim of the social forces of the neighborhood, everyone's fortunes are affected. Finally, "Special Wedding Ring" is the heartbreaking tale of Reba and Marvin - two young people forced to the fringes of life by intolerance for their physical disabilities. After being forced into an arranged marriage by their meddlesome mothers, the pair seems to find happiness…until fate intervenes. Eisner's graphic storytelling is as brilliant as ever. While he weaves these four stories against a specific backdrop, the power of this new work, like that of his past masterpieces (THE DREAMER, INVISIBLE PEOPLE), is in the universality of his themes. Like the tall tales still told in neighborhoods everywhere, the stories in MINOR MIRACLES provide people with something to share, something to cling to, and something to believe in. Most important, they give one hope and wonder. MINOR MIRACLES, part of the Will Eisner Library, is a 112-page, black-and-white graphic novel with a full-color cover edited by Karen Berger.
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Will Eisner:
Minor Miracles