Contract with God (3 points) and Blankets (3 points)

 Contract with God and Blankets both have overtly similar themes and storylines while being starkly different. Both utilized characters to speak on specific themes, such as abuse, religion, love, or lack thereof, etc. 

Contract with God is a mostly autobiographical story based on Will Eisner's life. It differs from Blankets' depiction because it uses multiple characters of different backgrounds to depict the themes listed above. Each story represented a different aspect of Eisner's life through a different character, from the spiral Hersh underwent after the death of his adopted daughter to Willie's experience with abuse. The art is reflective of how depressing and disturbing these stories are. The images are full of pain and emotion, but remain free form in its panel style and tightly rendered. Blankets differ from Contract with God as it's a literal autobiographical story, with Thompson illustrating his coming of age. Thematically, it's extremely similar, especially with Thompson constantly questioning his relationship with God and his trauma from childhood abuse. Unlike Contract with God, however, Blankets is somewhat happier. Thompson depicts both the good and bad by intertwining the personal stories of the characters, creating a story that is very real. Unlike the melodramatic tone of Contract with God. Additionally, Thompson's art style is much softer. It reminds me of comics that are aimed at children during certain parts of Blankets. It's still rendered really tightly and at times, is obviously more adult. But the more simple, softer art style lends itself in the areas of the comic where it was more positive and made the darker parts of the comic a lot more disturbing.