Will Eisner, Blankets, and the Graphic Novel

While reading the stories of Will Eisner and the graphic novel Blankets, there were several moments where I found myself almost uncomfortable reading them. Each in his own way was incredibly intimate. Giving me a look into the deepest aspects of their hearts, and seemingly hiding nothing from their audience. I felt a connection with the characters, and perhaps even the writer, certainly in the case of Blankets, a connection on an incredibly human level. The characters of Eisners' Contract with god were intriguing in the most basic of human ways. Each was presented as flawed and haunted by one thing or another, but none were shown as being entirely one thing. The Super who was accused of child abuse, but who loved his dog deeply, and was at his core, simply a lonely, and misunderstood man. While many would look at a man who was cornering a child in an alley as evil, a look into the real reasoning behind him being there will show that whatever onlookers may think is hardly ever the case.
The other side of the intimacy in the graphic novel can be found in both Eisner and Blankets, that intimacy being found within the human body itself. Their abilities to display such levels of raw human emotion astounds me. With only pen and paper all manner of feeling and interaction is displayed on the page. Nothing is left to chance, nothing is left to the imagination, every moment, every longing is there, clear as it would be if I were there with two teenagers under a game table at church camp. At times I felt almost like an intruder, as if I was prying out from these men their most closely held secrets, and I had to remind myself constantly that i had been allowed in, I had been welcomed by their pen to experience something I could at times relate to, at others know I would never feel entirely what those characters felt at that particular moment.
A critical question reading this material has made me ask myself as an artist is wether or not I am now or ever will be prepared to have that much of myself, my most precious moments out for the world to see. If I can be committed entirely to a story I want the world to hear, regardless of what I may expose about myself. It's something I believe every artist, especially in my field of storytelling, must ask themselves this question, and if the answer is no, if we can tell the stories that matter, because if we can't, what will our work contribute, what else but ourselves and our experiences, and lessons we've learned do we have to contribute? It's something I'd never considered before, but something absolutely worth exploring within ourselves.