pencil and story: Will Eisner

Among the best international comic book authors, Will Eisner lays bare his origins in this splendid story.
Will is of Jewish descent, born to a rather motley couple in 1912.
His mother is an uneducated woman, raised with a domineering aunt, who exploited her to look after the house and as a seamstress.
His father has a past as a painter in Vienna, which he left just before the First World War.
Will grew up on the streets of the Bronx, always in financial difficulty (we are in the period of the Great Depression).
Despite being in the United States, racism is omnipresent in society and is the focus of the entire novel.
Jews are hated by everyone, but so are the Italians and the Irish (strangely there is not even a black character in the story, but in those days the neighborhoods of New York were quite hermetic!).
Even within the Jewish community there are distinctions, depending on the country of origin.
Despite this Will manages to make his way in life, coming to publish as a cartoonist (the strips of "Spirit"), until he is drafted for the Second World War.
Young Will recalls all these events as the train is taking him to military training.