Extract from November 2006 post

This is an extract from one of the earlier blog, about this book Dropsie Avenue by Wll Eisner. Pardon me, my prevous post about dropsie is a bit vivid, cos it's over a year since I read the book.


Hmm... I have nothing much happens to me, cos I am actually doing spring Cleaning These few days, but I read up on another book, by Will Eisner, and I would like to share it with you.


Title: Dropsie Avenue: the neighborhood
Author: Eisner, Will.
Publisher: New York, NY : DC Comics, c2001.
Physical Description: 170 p. : chiefly ill. ; 26 cm.
Series Title: The Will Eisner library
Notes: Originally published: 1995.

One of the longest story, Dropsie Avenue displays a very constructive and pleasant environment, with stories of the resident in Dropsie Avenue for a hundred years.

He describe neighborhood as if it is like a person, who have the life span. It grow, mature and decay. This is exactly what happens to, to South Bronx, a majoy part of New York City, USA.

Dropsie Avenue was birth when it is a farming land. It grow, when people starts moving in, and it starts to grow. At that time, there are dispute between Irish and English. The Irish starts to moves into Dropsie Avenue, beside Skidmore and though the Irish O’brien invites them to their party, They declines. When Coleen O’Brien goes to become a prostitute, and was caught, the Irish have no courage to face the neighbours. The parent died of shock, and Coleen was forced to moved out to Canada. Her brother however, left behind, and continue the story.

Clara Brown enters into the picture, and married to Neil O’brien. They moved out, when industrial period have taken place, transforming the neighbourhood, from farming, to resident to industrial. It then turns to the conflict between the Germans and the English, where English chase away Germans, or refuses to co-operate with them. Danny Smith come into the next story, and refuses to built the railway, because it will have a devastating effect on the neighborhood. Danny was later cheated, blackmailed by an construction boss, to put the station into dropsie Avenue, so he can build tenements. Tenements starts to be erected, and more lives are featured into the picture, where even the black move into the neighbourhood, so is the Italians, and the black market.

Abie Gold, Izzy Cash and Svenson are some of the featured important people. They work and lives in Dropsie Avenue, in order to keep it going. All of the buildings starts to decays, as it reaches the life span. Svenson lost his building, which he bought from Izzy Cash, because he couldn’t afford the taxes. Izzy Cash lost all his building to developers, and Abie Gold, is the council, and a lawyer. Her spend all his life, trying to save Dropsie Avenue from other developers, so he could keep his childhood dream alive, by defending it. The black market overrun the entire neighbourhood, and eventually, all the buildings are scrapped, and the land bare waste. Abie Gold and Ruby, the first black girl, and a city developer are left. This is the chapter where the story starts to be affection, when Ruby and Abie shares the memories of the neighborhood. And enters Rowena, one of the most wealthiest woman, who bought the entire neighborhood. She wants the whole stretch to be constructed like her home she shared with her grandma. She was pity not to live long to see it. As the coporation left Abie a note, telling him of her feeling for the neighborhood, he strive hard to make it happens, with Izzy Cash and Rowena’s investment. Abie was later no longer seen, so I may never know, whether Abie gets to see his neighborhood. This is because Abie was portrayed as a very old man, when the Rowena Coporation gives the deposit to Abie. The story ends, when the neighbourhood was born, with new buildings meant for the resident.

The life portrayed about Rowena’s life really sadden me, because as she was building her empire, Dropsie Avenue was dying. And when she returns to Dropsie Avenue, her husband was no longer with her, and she speaks of her life in Dropsie, with her grandma, and how she knows her husband.