Four stand-alone stories make up the book: in "A Contract with God" a religious man gives up his faith after the death of his young adopted daughter; in "The Street Singer" a has-been diva tries to seduce a poor, young street singer, who tries to take advantage of her in turn; a bullying racist is led to suicide after false accusations of pedophilia in "The Super"; and "Cookalein" intertwines the stories of several characters vacationing in the Catskill Mountains.

Eisner uses large, monochromatic images in dramatic perspective, and emphasizes the caricatured characters' facial expressions; few panels or captions have traditional borders around them.

[4] With A Contract with God he aimed to explore an area of Jewish-American history that he felt was underdocumented, while showing that comics was capable of mature literary expression, at a time when it received little such regard as an artistic medium.

[10] The stories' sexual content is prominent, though not in the gratuitous manner of underground comix' celebration of hedonism,[11] which contrasted with the conservative lifestyle of Eisner the middle-aged businessman.

Eisner used no profanity in the book,[10] and according to critic Josh Lambert the sex in Contract is not so much erotic as disturbing, the characters frustrated or filled with guilt.

[15] Eisner called the story's creation "an exercise in personal anguish"[16] as he was still grieved and angered over his daughter Alice's death from leukemia at 16.

[16] Marta Maria, an aging opera singer, tries to seduce a young man,[18] Eddie, whom she finds singing in the alleys between tenement buildings.

[19] Eisner based the story on memories of an unemployed man who made the rounds of tenements singing "popular songs or off-key operatic operas"[20] for spare change.

[20] Eisner added a page to the 2006 edition in which a "Super Wanted" sign is posted on the tenement building, following the original conclusion of Rosie counting her stolen money.

To be alone with his mistress, a man named Sam sends his wife and children away to the Catskill Mountains, where they stay at a "cookalein" (Yiddish: kochalayn, "cook alone", a place for boarders with access to a kitchen).

An older woman seduces Sam's fifteen-year-old son Willie at the cookalein; they are discovered by her husband who, after beating her, makes love to her in front of the boy.

After American Visuals went out of business in 1972, Eisner entered a deal with underground comix publisher Denis Kitchen to reprint old Spirit stories.

Other reprints followed, but Eisner was unwilling to do new Spirit stories—instead, he wanted to do something more serious, inspired in part by the wordless novels of Lynd Ward he first read in 1938,[29] and similar work by the Flemish Frans Masereel and the German Otto Nückel.

Since the 1950s, he had been developing ideas for a book, but was unable to gain support for them, as comics was seen by both the public and its practitioners as low-status entertainment; at a meeting of the National Cartoonists Society in 1960, Rube Goldberg rebuked Eisner's ambitions, saying, "You are a vaudevillian like the rest of us ... don't ever forget that!

[30] Eisner emphasizes the urban setting with dramatic, vertical perspective, and dark artwork with much chiaroscuro,[41] and uses visual motifs to tie the stories together.

[48] The characters are depicted neither as purely good or evil: for example, Rosie in "The Super" triumphs over the racist, abusive superintendent by stealing his money, having him framed for pedophilia, and driving him to suicide.

[49] Frimme Hersh seeks freedom from oppressive Eastern European antisemitism;[49] there is a feeling of elation for characters in the final story as they find their way out of the tenement's, and the city's, confinement.

The two outer stories further emphasize Jewish identity with the extra-urban portions of their settings—the rural Russian origin of the religious Hersh in "Contract", and the Catskill mountains in "Cookalein", a retreat commonly associated with Jews in the 20th century.

[25] Art critic Peter Schjeldahl saw the "over-the-topness" endemic to American comics, and Eisner's work, as "ill-suited to serious subjects, especially those that incorporate authentic social history".

[53] The work has been criticized for its use of stereotypical imagery; writer Jeremy Dauber countered that these images reflect Eisner's own memories of his youth and the strictures that Jewish people felt in the tenements.

[30] Others said caricaturized character designs conflicted with the otherwise realism of the stories; the appropriateness of the style was defended by others, such as Dennis O'Neil,[54] who said that they better reflect the impressionistic way a child remembers the past.

[13] To art historian Matthew Baigell, Hershe's angst regarding his relationship with God is a modern response to the questions of Hillel the Elder's quoted in the Pirkei Avot: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

[9] Eisner intended A Contract with God to have an adult audience, and wanted it to be sold in bookstores rather than comic shops;[59] as such, he turned down an offer from Denis Kitchen to publish it.

Kitchen Sink Press reissued the book in 1985,[d] as did DC Comics in 2001 as part of its Will Eisner Library;[65] and W. W. Norton collected it in 2005 as The Contract with God Trilogy in a single volume with its sequels, A Life Force (1988) and Dropsie Avenue (1995).

[70][71] A Contract with God has frequently, though erroneously, been cited as the first graphic novel;[72] comic book reviewer Richard Kyle had used the term in 1964 in a fan newsletter,[73] and it had appeared on the cover of The First Kingdom (1974) by Jack Katz, with whom Eisner had corresponded.

According to comics historian R. Fiore, Eisner's work as a graphic novelist also maintained his reputation as "a contemporary figure rather than a relic of the dim past".

[77] The book succeeded in getting into bookstores, though initial sales amounted to a few thousand copies in its first year; stores had difficulty finding an appropriate section in which to shelve it.

[78] The book's marketing consisted initially of word-of-mouth and in fanzines and trade periodicals, as mainstream newspapers and magazines did not normally review comics at the time.

[76] Critic Dale Luciano called the book a "perfectly and exquisitely balanced ... masterpiece", and praised Kitchen Sink Press for reprinting such a "risky project" in 1985.

[64] Eisner's status as a cartoonist grew after A Contract with God appeared, and his influence was augmented by his time as a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he expounded his theories of the medium.