 | This graphic novel was the final work of master cartoonist Will Eisner. Throughout his career he developed most of the important narrative skills of the medium. Over the years he was one of the first to take the medium seriously as a place to tell stories and express ideas.
"The Plot" is a fitting final work. Eisner, a child of the depression from Jewish immigrants encountered anti-Semitism everywhere he went throughout his career and his life. In his biography on this work he states that he remained Jewish "On principle." I take that to mean that he refused to give in to intimidation.
For his final work he decided to take on a document that had led to much grief through the course of his life and the lives of countless Jews world wide: "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
Through to course of an engrossing narrative you discover how the document originated in a much different form: as a protest to one of Napoleon's descendants a story of a dialogue in hell with Machaevali.
And how centuries later power lusters in Russia found this document and through plagiarism used it to exploit the anti-Semitism of the Czar.
You follow the stories of the numerous times this document has been proven to be a total fraud in academia... only to gain more and more support from the more weak and jealous of the masses.
How when confronted with each new fact the only response its supporters give is "The fact that the protocols is a fraud simply proves the duplicity of the Jews."
It is a study of how irrationality spreads. It is a study of how and why men give in to their weakness and how they will grasp at any excuse to blame another so they can say "It's not MY fault." It is a study of the mindset which when confronted with the innocence of its target, can only respond with the idea that the evidence is also a lie. And respond with yet more violence.
His goal was to state once and for all, in words which no man could twist and any man could understand, the unspeakable lie of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
---Landon
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The Plot: The Secret History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Will Eisner
