Fagin the Jew

Eisner portrays Fagin as a distressed and complex character, and tells the story of his life and his place in the Ashkenazic community of London in the first person, with many illustrations.

[2] In his 2008 500 Essential Graphic Novels, comics scholar Gene Kannenberg Jr. praised it as "skillfully executed, thought provoking, and enlightening".

[3] New Internationalist called the book "sensitive", and a "remind[er to] cartoonists of the power of their pens and their responsibility to distinguish between good and bad stereotyping.

"[4] Publishers Weekly lauded its illustrations as "gorgeously expressive", emphasizing that "no one can convey a story through body language like Eisner", but faulted the narrative as "err[ing] on the side of extreme coincidence and melodrama", with an "awkwardly simplified run-through of Dickens' plot" and a "constant stream of expository dialogue [that] becomes laughable".

[5] Booklist likewise found the narrative "starkly melodramatic [and] agenda-driven", and "lack[ing] nuance", but nonetheless considered the book to be "heartfelt", and compared it to John Gardner's Grendel.